could i persuade you,
nobilissima,
to be my sovereign.

could i coax you to be
master of me.

could i soothe your wounds
be they ever so ancient,
be they ever so new.

could i offer you a bouquet of words,
a floral cluster of phonemes,
to sweeten drowseless nights.

could i be helpmeet, handmaid,
your fool in perpetuity.

could i impress you
with wild prostrations,
with ostentatious genuflexions.

could you be my sunday school,
your penetrating gaze my catechism.

could i dare to weep like jesus
returning the weeping woman's favour.

christ, the son of man,
lavishing a cataract of tears
onto her disreputable feet.

blessing her flesh
hot with a million sins,
blotched with countless wrongs.

tuckered out with chasing pleasure,
eager to be worshipped.

mortal goddess,
vulnerable monarch
of the gobsmacked angels.

could you be my angry beatrice,
my sweatdrenched stella,
star and consolatrix of the sonnets.

could i warble dulcet rhymes
and venerate your vestiges.

make you laugh adroitly
at my twelvethumbed gaucherie.

could i humble myself to exalt you,
alleluia your exhaustion,
amplify your strength.

for you are salt tears and splendour.
weary bones and wonder of the world.