The Meme of Bilitis

We lay in shade diaphanous
And spoke the light that burns in us

As in the glooming’s net I caught her,
She shimmered like reflected water!

Romantic and emphatic moods
Are not for her whom life eludes…

Its vulgar tinsel round her fold?
She’d rather shudder with the cold,

Attend just this elusive hour,
A show in a shadow bower,

A moving imagery so fine,
It must have been her soul near mine

And do we blended and possessed
Each in each the phantom guest,

Inseparate, we scarcely met;
Yet other love-nights we forget!


by natalie clifford barney, lesbian poet