psyche/eros

there’s a god in the dark and he’s got a hand between your thighs,
the snare of his teeth around a breath, as though it might stir
the dry and moveless air of temples. He calls you Leda
sometimes, or Danae, Europa—Ganymede, when he is drunk—
it runs in the family, you think, but then

what accounts for the sweetness of human beings, that wild
self-directed longing that makes even divinity
kneel, and press its ear to our chests, trying to hear
some note half-forgotten, a yes so brief. Or maybe

the sound of the sea in that cavernous space, tumultuous
breathless; waves coming and going on the lure of an eye,
a lip. Being so caught up,
                                      in the press of his fingers that you
forget shrine and grove and oracle, the pale poet, dreaming;
you are threaded through his mouth, and every time he opens it
your name will come spilling out with the lamp-light.