Eccentric

I remember sitting in Dr.Carol Christ's class at Cal in 2001 while she told us a story about Dante Gabriel Rossetti burying his poems with his dead wife as an act of love...only to later succumb to the pressure of his preraphaelite friends and exhume her body. He then published this collection. I want these poems that have slept with the dead and almost weren't. There was a time in my life when I identified with the eccentric. Growing up or growing down, I'm not sure which, but now they are more "they" than "we." Here is one poem that got him in a lot of trouble with "the establishment." They accused him of what I used to call "cheating"--writing about sex. It's already stimulating, so a poet always has the upper hand when choosing this topic. But cheating can be beautiful as shown here...

Nuptial Sleep

At length their long kiss severed with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
Of married flowers to either side outspread
From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red, Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away. Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
He woke, and wondered more. For there she lay.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti