Sing of Bareness a New Song, by Shirley Glubka

Untitled, by Zdzislaw Beksinski (Poland). 1984.

Sing of Bareness a New Song

Were it necessary to recognize only carved agony, 
the inevitable effort of suffering,

the starved human frame
doubled to a clinging skeletal pair,

genocide, famine, all things apocalyptic
in these death-bound lovers,

I would not have come to know that
one in one united bare in bare doth shine;

nor been struck wordless by the force of the glow 
from the stripped complexity of the final ecstatic coupling.

Shirley Glubka
​
(Author's Note: "The title is from 'The Song of Bareness,' author unknown, formerly ascribed to Johannes Tauler; the line in italics is from Meister Eckhart.)

This was written in response to the surprise ekphrastic challenge on sex and art.

Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, the author of three poetry collections, a mixed genre collection, and two novels. The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh (novel, Blade of Grass Press, 2017) is her latest. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com/ Online poetry at The Ekphrastic Review here and at 2River View here and at The Ghazal Page here and here.