True, madam, true: only a fool would try
to imitate John Donne in poetry.
And I’m that fool. The lapse of centuries
has not reduced the power of strip-tease
to hold a lady’s visitor in thrall.
Too slowly, yet too fast, your garments fall;
you toy with my desires, you draw my eyes
‘above, below’; my rising fancy tries
to peep through those adornments which remain
and, in my mock frustration, I complain
I don’t know if my libido’s compelled
the more by what’s displayed or what withheld.
The sequence of disrobing Donne sets down
— the girdle first, the breast-plate, busk, the gown,
the coronet, hose, shoes — differs not much
from what my mistress knows I like to watch.
For ‘busk’ read ‘basque’; for ‘breast-plate’, ‘bra’; I know
that girdles now come later in the show.
The gowns you wear (petite) enlarge my lust
and, what is more, they won’t drag in the dust.
I am of Cromwell’s party, don’t forget;
your queenly beauty needs no coronet.
Some difference there is, your lover thinks,
between the great and minor poets’ kinks.
For me, no carnal pleasure can compare
with that supplied by flimsy underwear.
Donne reaches climax through full nudity:
‘Off,’ ‘Off,’ ‘Make shift to shift that shift,’ cries he.
Your latter-day but no less ardent John
prefers you with your shoes and stockings on.
‘America! my new-found-land’, ‘My Mine’:
he, libertine (but soon-to-be divine),
saw sex in terms of England v. the Rest;
he plundered her as soon as she undressed.
We know where such equivalences led:
the rape of nations, and the millions dead;
the victor’s excess of testosterone —
‘I come, I see, I ravish, and I own.’
(Or should ‘I come’, instead of first, come third?)
Madam, you ravish me by deed and word.
Forgive that sudden change of tone of voice;
sometimes a poem’s not a poet’s choice.
Now you are nearly naked, but not quite,
undress your man, and take your own delight.
Don’t be ‘My Mine’, be mine; this bargain’s made
between two friendly countries, as fair trade.
These couplets ended, you and I are free
to couple for our pleasure, equally.
