Alice: An Adultery

She drains our health and builds it up Into her body ; takes our breath, And we—we dream not it is death ! Arm unto arm and eye to eye, Breast to great breast and thigh to thigh, We look, and strain, and laugh, and die. I see the head hovering above To swoop for cruelty or love ; I feel the swollen veins below The knotted throat ; the ebb and flow Of blood, not milk, in breasts of fire ; Of deaths, not fluctuants, of desire ; Of molten lava that abides Deep in the vast volcanic sides ; Deep scars where kisses once bit in Below young mountains that be twin, Stigmata cruciform of sin, The diary of Messaline. The moving mountains crater-crowned ; The valleys deep and silver-bound ; The girdle treacherously wound ; One violet-crest mounded mole, 11