L'amour est un oiseau rebelle

Like a rebellious bird, they sometimes say a slippery fish, a lion on a leash a flaming fox, entrapped, who pines away a moaning bear in chains no law can teach.  

The reins of marriage cannot bind its will.   No tidy fence, no pasture appease its thirst   for wilderness—cragged rock from jutting hill the bleak ache of desert, savage cloudburst.   No other love must be tamed like this—   our tenderness for children sown like seeds,   friendships sprouting ferns, wet with dew and bliss,   but love for men, outside planted rows, are weeds.   It cannot be trained by words, by habit.   Love is no sweet and docile rabbit.  

So let me wrap it in a cardboard box   all taped with ribbons and tied with bows,   this organ of fire, throbbing thing that knocks   and cries, creature of claw and blood that flows.   Should I juice it like an orange? Boil it down   like honey, or like jam? Keep it in a cage   where it belongs, but squeeze it flat and brown,   distill for you its passion and its rage?  

Uncivilized, it abides by no laws.   Must I clip it, trim it like a hedge grown wild?  

Bridle and saddle it, muzzle its jaws,  

admonish it like a petulant child?  

A rough and ancient beast, it withers in chains   or rebels, turns on its master, bares its fangs.