Psalm

You wrap your fingered hands around my skull
and crush – heat grows behind my eyes.
This love hurts. I stand in morning
before the silver sea – it speaks –
love hurts, all beauty hurts
and man is clay. One day
I will leave you, and find another cave
where music is baffled by the stone
and deep back, where I will sit
the music will be a dying sound,
but I may take charcoal in my hands
and run swift lines along the wall –
images of you, words the charcoal feels:
this love hurts. There will be no
going far enough to go. You are where
beauty is, and beauty hurts. I feel
perhaps pain is what makes me real.
When I close my eyes
you drag my feet for miles and wake me
where I am lost and no one knows my name
but all around is beauty, and it hurts.
Only give my knees a place to pray.
I love you, but this love hurts,
and I am only clay.