Lovers who are each the other’s double,
Time cannot dignify nor love ennoble;
And since the flesh created partly one
Can merge no further, still less be undone,
Let them whom parting closets, love parades,
Take up for talisman the jack of spades.
One card-ubiquitous, anonymous
Shall be the self and souvenir of us:
The duple monster, who, wherever found,
Is to his incubus and likeness bound;
Whose knavish garb disguises, where he joins,
The single heart that has replaced the loins;
And who will tell us, settled in safe niches,
How, earlier, we had a knave’s new riches;
Contentment that, when fickler passion left,
Retained the sure compulsiveness of theft;
And who will guard, poor mace upraised in air,
The whole, the true, the younger selves we were
Our eyes henceforth, their colors and their spaces,
Must seem the features of the jack’s two faces,
Forever turned apart, to bear in mind
The sudden saltness in a glance behind.
The caught breath must recover on command;
The stiffened mouth must be the jack’s, the hand;
Although, however well we imitate,
The blood we cannot transubstantiate.
We cannot tell the pulse to rise and sink,
Or change the essence of the card from ink.
And though it is this card we take away,
Be it the blood’s high suit that we essay.
Jack, you the suitor, you the name to sue …
Recover, Spade, what no hearts ever do.
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