After “Love and the Lover’s Heart” by Dante

If you’ve been caged in a woman’s eyes as cold
white knives of light slit through you; If a hearse
and its widow prove love short and brutal; Or worse,
if love is your grave priest, his damp fists oiled
with sweat, shackling your wrists—
                              you should be told
a one-lunged oracle coughed, Your love is your curse.
This black fact’s yours. At 3 AM, perverse
and paranoid, you’ll sleep, nightmares uncoiled….

Love’s a man—and that heart crazed in his hand,
it’s yours. He’s strangling it. Your lover’s sleeping.
Love jerks her waist with his crooked arm. She wakes.
She quickens. Love says nothing,
                                        no command,
but he pushes your heart to her teeth. Though her lip shakes,
she bites the meat. She swallows. Love leaves weeping.