I
Epithet For Anna Marie White
She has turned her back to us
To kiss the earth.
Yet something of her nimbus
And her shadow
Stays with us as a blessing
And a curse.
“Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.”
1990
II
To love is to experience
The kiss of noble birth.
Yet even as God crowned me
With the nimbus of this blessing,
My beloved cloaked me
With the shadow of his curse.
Such knowledge arms
All angels in my garden.
Will I choose a path
To heaven or to hell?
1990
Fragment
(Beginning)
Already it is dusk.
I stand by the gatepost waiting,
For in the afterglow of twilight,
My memory of them is very near.
(Transition)
But this kiss from a ghost
Imparts both a blessing and a curse.
(Ending)
God destroys us,
Destroys us, utterly.
1990
III
ICON
Dedicated To Bede Smith
In a painting on the altar,
The man is perfected,
And the woman smiles
With beatitude.
Her nimbus and his shadow
Are glowing with the ichor
That sustains an inner life.
I kiss this icon
As an act of veneration.
May these saints be
Guardians of my soul.
1990
stevengoldenpoetry 