(Written in response to Andrew Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress.)

Though we may be lacking time

Oh, bold lover, we’ve not yet reached our prime.

If we lay down now in a pleasant embrace,

Then you might vanish without a trace;

Swept up by a current to find other rubies,

Leaving me crying into deep blue seas,

Measuring absence with shadows on a dial

and hoping you’ll come back with the flooding Nile.

I wisely refuse your constant advances,

Until you offer more than greedy, lustful glances.

Your love, growing like an empire, must endure

Or, like Rome, it will fall if it is not secure.

Adore every fleck of gold in my eyes that you find

But I much prefer you praise my mind,

Take time to soothe my pain,

Gently hold any broken pieces that remain.

If you practice patience for the touch you crave,

Your name on my heart, for eternity, will be engraved.

Once you give me that unbreakable bond

Then, to your desires, I’ll greatly respond.

Take my hand on the cliffs of Moher,

Watch the city rise from the ocean floor.

Spend seven years perfecting love’s gaze,

Like the lovers of Valdaro on their final day.

Grains in each hourglass will cease to fall.

No more footsteps will be heard through the hall.

Lay down for the last time in a bed of fire.

Ashes blow through the desert where the earth desires.

Beauty is fleeting in that last breath,

But beauty follows the echoes of death.

After six thousand years preserved in dust,

Archaeologists find remnants of your lust.

Until youth departs like the morning star,

Bowing out of the night into dawn with devoir,

I stand on the mountain to proudly proclaim,

Instant fires don’t compare to the eternal flame.

Now my heart flutters and drops

Out of a deathless sleep and flip-flops.

Patience holds us up like sails on a mast.

It’s the reason enamored feelings last;

Unlike Orpheus, who stole a look,

And more potent than the poison Romeo took.

To savor each devoted wedding vow we recite,

Will take us through pearl gates and golden light.

Though we may follow a setting sun

A fulfilling, holy life has just begun.

This was written by our contributing writer, Karina Coghlan.