Sensual Love Poems

Awakenings of LoveANCIENT EGYPTIAN LOVE LYRICYour love has gone all through my bodylike honey in water,as a drug is mixed into spices,as water is mingled with wine.Oh that you would speed to see your sisterlike a charger on the battlefield, like a bull to his pasture!For the heavens are sending us love like a flame spreading through strawand desire like the swoop of the falcon!Anonymous[c. 1085–c. 570 b.c.]FLOWER OF LOVEThe perfume of your body dulls my sense.I want nor wine nor weed; your breath aloneSuffices. In this moment rare and tenseI worship at your breast. The flower is blownThe saffron petals tempt my amorous mouth,The yellow heart is radiant now with dewSoft-scented, redolent of my loved South;O flower of love! I give myself to you.Uncovered on your couch of figured green,Here let us linger indivisible.The portals of your sanctuary unseenReceive my offering, yielding unto me.Oh, with our love the night is warm and deep!The air is sweet, my flower, and sweet the fluteWhose music lulls our burning brain to sleep,While we lie loving, passionate and mute.Claude McKay[1890–1948] THE BAITCome live with me, and be my love,And we will some new pleasures proveOf golden sands, and crystal brooks,With silken lines, and silver hooks.There will the river whispering runWarmed by thy eyes, more than the sun.And there the’enamoured fish will stay,Begging themselves they may betray.When thou wilt swim in that live bath,Each fish, which every channel hath,Will amorously to thee swim,Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,By sun, or moon, thou darkenest both,And if myself have leave to see,I need not their light, having thee.Let others freeze with angling reeds,And cut their legs, with shells and weeds,Or treacherously poor fish beset,With strangling snare, or windowy net:Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nestThe bedded fish in banks out-wrest,Of curious traitors, sleavesilk fliesBewitch poor fishes’ wandering eyes.For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,For thou thyself art thine own bait,That fish, that is not catched thereby,Alas, is wiser far than I.John Donne[1572–1631] SO JUST KISS MESo just kiss me and let my hairmessy itself in your fingerstell me nothing needs to be done—no clocks need windingThere is no bell without a voiceneeding to borrow my owninstead, let me steady myselfin the armsof a man who won’t ask me to bewhat he needs, but lets me existas I am a blonde flame a hurricanewrapped upin a tiny bodythat will come to his armslike the safest harbor for mendingJewel Kilcher[1974– ]