i.

Been measuring this goddamned garden
all day, for what feels like all of my
lives, squaring off a plot where I can

build us a Temple of Love, a fine
little diamond I’ve got to pull
through rough stone, polish it just enough

to make you a home, transform what I’ve
overturned into a new form, from
rubble sculpt a throne, not let you down

again, not in the same way, at least,
as when I laid a wreath at the feet
of another deity any

other man might mistake for his own,
but heaven resents arrogance and
relentless restlessness in mortals,

worse all the more he who forgets his
prayers are answers to another’s needs,
eternity’s certainty whispered

                    ii.

under rafters arched like the brow of
some Cyclops god whose one eye rides
around the clouds in a triangle

halo, who alone knows the goings
on of those below, we sowers no
discord follows if we empower

those we grow with what all hearts want to
swallow, showers of drops which fall for,
not wander from, the one for whom each

beating of the sun against hard work
marks out their course, this pool of ours poor
lovers marathon toward, tracing

its circuit’s warmth with fever sweating
autumnal offerings of shadow,
what summer pores open forth the veils

of their covered wells to hold onto
more than our own cruel mouths did months
before, little silver kisses which

                    iii.

torture flesh until it burns from what
cures, until we both shiver shards and
return to earth again, mirrored stars

remembering how we never were
ones to worship the sun or praise each
other the way strangers wonder at

our legendary pleasure only
ever mentioned in rumours I now
have the honoured duty, the sacred

opportunity, of an hour in
your arms to prove true, to pull on through
ploughing past how wrong I was then to

promise a love which was false, to make
amends doing you the way you should
be done, finishing what I started

once and for all, pledging to plant deep
as conquerors do flags and seeds this
part of me you took seriously.