Greater Than Virtue

 You desire—
 all the love in this world
 to prostrate at your feet…
 I tell you truly,
 where will you ever find
 love that is real?
 The love of servitude—that only dissolves in servitude to love!
  
 True love—rests well in museums.
 Playing the shameless rival
 to some master thief,
 sometimes, when you lease your heart
 to the museum, that jewel
 might be yours—
 but never scorn it, never…
 Love, once lost
 to neglect's wounded pride,
 never returns again,
 so proud is love!
 Keep that treasure of tenderness in tenderness!
  
 I know
 'someone' or 'some people' perhaps
 will die laughing at this.
 They'll say,
 what does it matter anyway!
 Lost before, found before! Ah, all the better!
 Love changes hands by love's own hand!
 Modern love—
 lives in the hand, not the heart!
 Just within reach, stretch out and it's gone!
  
 The thought comes—
 these too are human masks loving masks, loving only the love of masks!
 They call their ribs, with theatrical sincerity, by the name of heart!
 When the body exhausts, so exhausts the mind, spent and scattered!
 Love—flies mind to mind, stirs flesh to flesh!
  
 Let these bodiless feelings,
 burning in paper bodies
 in fire's blazing union
 mixed with fresh-burnt scent,
 remain invisible!
 The one who sees that invisible—
 only them do I call lover!
 Though if one could remain unseen too,
 that would be good as well!
  
 Let feeling—
 die if it must,
 but never
 become a slave!
 Death is the true address of feeling born without debt!
 Birth of feeling without debt to death—that is sin!
 The joy of that sin
 is greater than virtue!