CHRIS MANSELL
Poetry—'To Auguste & Andrea'
      

polish your love
like a bright thing
fragile as a bee
sting polish your love
as if invented
this morning

newly
personally
by you
while eating toast
while struck by the genius
of the numinous ginger marmalade

and as if you were born
yesterday to save
the world to create
the heart

polish your love
until its thrive song makes trees
hum in sympathy and despair
of their mere treeness
their un-you-thee-ness

as you
shining hard in the fiery air
polish your love until nothing
matters nothing
nothing
but it and you

and then heat the kettle
and then fill the fire
and then take your polished love
gleaming limbed
knowing everything to bed