miss paradise

[joel]

Miss Paradise— what a charlatan device
that name had been for lust, that irony
of nomenclature formerly of you—
but was it not for me an omen? Ought
I not had presupposed a name so charged
directly with associations of
perfection wouldn’t surely too be tossed
with primal sin, with paradises lost
as you were lost, Miss Paradise— but love
has not diminished, but enlarged
its roots in you and by its name you’re wrought
by names of Missus Someone Else. I view
a foreigner in you unknown to me—
a happy wife— I now miss paradise.