Polarities

SOMETIMES she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass,

Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood;

Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon,

Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon.

Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees;

Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences;

Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither,

Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water.

Sometimes, when she makes pea-soup or plays me Schumann,

I love her one way; sometimes I love her another

More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark;

Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk,

Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall;

Sometimes I don't like her at all.