Robert Graves: The Fires And Falcons of Desire

FIRE WALKER


To be near her is to be near the furnace.
Fortunate boy who could slip idly through,
Basket in hand, culling the red-gold blossom,
Then wander on, untaught that flowers are flame,
With no least smell of scorching on his clothes!
I, at a greater distance, charred to coal,
Earn her reproach for my temerity.




THE FALCON WOMAN


It is hard to be a man
Whose word is his bond
In love with such a woman,


When he builds on a promise
She lightly let fall
In carelessness of spirit.


The more sternly he asks her
To stand by that promise
The faster she flies.


But is it less hard
To be born such a woman
With wings like a falcon
And in carelessness of spirit
To love such a man?


--Robert Graves


Graves is always a good poet for the issues and the textures of desire.


Falcon women and falcon men--or half-falcon folks, even--make love and life harder on their partners and would-be partners.  Warning signs needed?  Would they be heeded, even?

"There Is A Tide In The Affairs of Women . . ."

Or, "But Actium, Lost For Cleopatra's Eyes"
--Byron's opening to Canto VI of Don Juan:


'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood'--you know the rest,
And most of us have found it, now and then;
At least we think so, though but few have guessed
The moment, till too late to come again.
But no doubt every thing is for the best--
Of which the surest sign is in the end:
When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.


There is a tide in the affairs of women
'Which taken at the flood leads'--God knows where.
Those navigators must be able seamen
Whose charts lay down its current to a hair;
Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen
With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:--
Men with their heads reflect on this and that--
But women with their hearts or heaven knows what!


And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright she,
Young, beautiful, and daring--who would risk
A throne, the world, the universe, to be
Beloved in her own way, and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free
As are the billows when the breeze is brisk--
Though such a she's a devil (if that there be one)
Yet she would make full many a Manichean.


Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset
By commonest Ambition, that when Passion
O'erthrows the same, we readily forget,
Or at the least forgive, the laving rash one.
If Anthony be well remembered yet,
'Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion,
But Actium, lost for Cleopatra's eyes,
Outbalance all the Caesar's victories.


He died at fifty for a queen of forty;
I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty,
For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but sport--I
Remember when, though I had no great plenty
Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I
Gave what I had--a heart:--as the world went, I
Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never
Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.


--Lord Byron

Minerva, Mermaid: sculpture mix: sea foam glazing; copper wire.