Modern Romanticism

What feeling

In our guilt,

Shared like a glass of wine,

On an ivory saucer,

Drunk like milk,

Like one spying cat

With careful awareness,

And needless espionage.

We share it,

And drown it

Upon our arms,

Soaked like eels in the wet grass,

Beneath, where their poison sinks into soil

That lifts the reeds to follow

The swans to their mate.

While we curtsy

To one another,

And treat each other

To mourning,

We face guilt, raw and wild,

With imagery so well-known to our eyes,

And bleed a new light

Upon a cracked reflection

In the night.

We are,

After all,

Two serpents in a web

Of unnoticed shortcomings.