Love Stinks

We have taken the night
like a Persian black cat
into bed with us;
your fingers stoking my body’s heat
are the glittering red
glassware of my childhood,
are scents suddenly
remembered and pungent;
dark rivers under your hair
as under remote bridges.
I feel with my hands
The cool rain bark of your limbs.

Afterwards lying on our backs
like pillowed sovereigns
we decree space
and allow thought and the room’s objects
to separate us;
abstract and personal
we turn
in the round cavity of sleep

- Irving Layton, Nightfall