To a Student who Reads "The Second Coming" as Sexual Autobiography
Reading your essay, I find the “widening gyre”
Might be Maude Gonne’s; falcon and falconer,
The disaffected lovers who can’t hold
The bitter-sweet anarchy of their world
After her “blood-dimmed tide” is loosed, and everywhere
Illusions of lost innocence are drowned.
Lovers, you say, (“the best ones like the worst”!)
Are blinded by passionate intensity.
Surely, to claim a second coming’s at hand
Bodes well for romance; on the other hand,
It smacks of locker-room bravado, a lout
Who thinks his “vast image” a Spiritus Mundi
Rising again, unsated, for dessert,
His prowess more a lion’s than average man’s,
His “slow thighs” moving. Yes, that pitiless sun
Might signify his coldness after it,
Her indignation’s reeling desert birds
As he rolls over to a stony sleep.
More than leaving her to rock the cradle
Of unprotected sex, that twice he didn’t last
For her to finish, you close, “cannot be borne.”