Paradise / When the Kissing Flesh is Gone

love in chancery

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5 Paradise / When the kissing flesh is gone

Paradise

This night I've been one hour in Paradise;
There found a feather from the Cock that Crew ––
There heard the echo of the Kiss that Slew,
And in the dark, about past agonies
Hummed little flies.

When the Kissing Flesh Is Gone

When the kissing flesh is gone
And tooth to tooth true lovers lie
Idly snarling, bone to bone,
Will you term that ecstasy?
Nay, but love in chancery.
In the last extremity,
Duelling eternity,
Love lies down in clemency,
Compounding rogue fidelity.

Flies and dashes (--) remind us of Emily Dickinson?

We find time usurpation in "When the Kissing Flesh Is Gone". Here we might think of Time and Western Man, by Windham Lewis, the Vorticist who was so close to Ezra Pound. Picasso's views of the same object from different vantagepoints is thought of as a usurpation of time. The 20th Century according to Lewis and Jean Gebser is the moment in history when human consciousness comes around to time's usurpation. See Jean Gebser's Ever Present Origin, which sets out three ages of consciousness, culminating in the current time usrupation.