A Chastisement for John Donne

   “So, if I dreame I have you, I have you,
	for all our joyes are but fantasticall.”
			Elegie X, “The Dreame”

   “Yet, love and hate mee too….”
		       “The Prohibition”

    by Susan Stevens


I want to despise you,
that your wife
died upon birth
of her twelfth child.
But I can only 
marvel, instead,
at your conceits.

Was it your con-
ceit that awed
her so?  Was it
that which held
her down, “love-
slain,” caught in a 
feminine compromise?

Did it help you write
that she, with child
nearly every 
year, held
her tongue and
let you love,
let it all happen?

O John.
The paradox of
this death
staggers your own
metaphysics.  It’s
“owner bee
of thee one hour”
murdered in
her bed. Dear Anne!

When death lifted
her last child
from arms that never
seemed to abstain
from yours, she canon-
ized herself,
and left you to
realize
that even the best
Petrarchan conceit
can only play,
and love, among words.