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FURTHER READING
Poems by William Cartwright
Falsehood
To Chloe: Who for his sake wished herself younger
Poems About Passion and Sex
9.
by E. E. Cummings
Canterbury Tales, Wife of Bath's Prologue [Excerpt]
by Geoffrey Chaucer
A Greek Island
by Edward Hirsch
A Sequence
by Leslie Scalapino
Almost There
by Timothy Liu
Antique
by Arthur Rimbaud
Arts & Sciences
by Philip Appleman
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm
by Carl Phillips
Blue
by May Swenson
Boston
by Aaron Smith
Carrefour
by Amy Lowell
corydon & alexis, redux
by D. A. Powell
Elegy 5
by Ovid
Erotic Energy
by Chase Twichell
First Turn to Me...
by Bernadette Mayer
Fish Fucking
by Michael Blumenthal
Fixed
by Christopher Stackhouse
He Asked About the Quality—
by C. P. Cavafy
In Praise of Shame
by Lord Alfred Douglas
Kinky
by Denise Duhamel
Libido
by Rupert Brooke
Me in Paradise
by Brenda Shaughnessy
National Nudist Club Newsletter
by Wayne Koestenbaum
Novel
by Arthur Rimbaud
Poems of Passion and Sex
Prague
by Khadijah Queen
Privilege of Being
by Robert Hass
Remember, Body ...
by C. P. Cavafy
Safe Sex
by Donald Hall
Sex
by Michael Ryan
Song
by James Joyce
Stones
by Michael Blumenthal
The Ecstasy
by Phillip Lopate
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
by D.H. Lawrence
The Hug
by Thom Gunn
To His Mistress Going to Bed
by John Donne
Wild Rose
by Bryher
XIII
by César Vallejo
Year of the Tiger
by Miguel Murphy
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No Platonic Love

 
by William Cartwright

Tell me no more of minds embracing minds, 
     And hearts exchang'd for hearts; 
That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds, 
     And mix their subt'lest parts; 
That two unbodied essences may kiss, 
And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss. 

I was that silly thing that once was wrought 
     To practise this thin love; 
I climb'd from sex to soul, from soul to thought; 
     But thinking there to move, 
Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then 
From soul I lighted at the sex again. 

As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast, 
     Who yet in closets eat; 
So lovers who profess they spririts taste, 
     Feed yet on grosser meat; 
I know they boast they souls to souls convey, 
Howe'r they meet, the body is the way. 

Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread 
     Those vain aerial ways 
Are like young heirs and alchemists misled 
     To waste their wealth and days, 
For searching thus to be for ever rich, 
They only find a med'cine for the itch.



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