Recall, even before your name,
The nerve inside the temple
Rubbed red by poems --
By the thorned manacle
Of this thirst for poems --

 A thirst like dust in a sorrowing hall
With a thin carpet and small moths
And a bad light worming in the walls --

 A thirst like an urgent trout
Puppying upstream over your sacred tongue --

 Does your beloved dream?
Make her a dream more succulent than mine
If you can.

David Barnett