At the Touch of You

At the Touch of You
By Witter Bynner

At the touch of you,
As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow,
The arrows of delight shot through my body.

You were spring,
And I the edge of a cliff,
And a shining waterfall rushed over me.

About the Poet

“At the Touch of You” is presented in two tercets of irregular free verse with a theme of romantic love. The imagery in the first stanza is evocative of Greek mythology. The second stanza uses the image of a waterfall to create a beautiful metaphor. What drew me into this poem was the first line: “At the touch of you.” Most poems begin with mentioning the sight of the poet’s lover and describe their outer appearance, but Bynner instead felt his rush of emotions not when he saw his love, but when his lover touched him.

I feel like he is describing how it feels when his lover’s makes love to him. Without much doubt, this poem is very erotic. He touches him and as he enters him, his “arrow of delight” shoots through his body setting him off an erotic journey as his lover’s touch travels across his body setting him on an erotic edge of that cliff that brings him just to the edge of orgasm before that orgasm comes and rushes over him like a “shining waterfall.” That is quite an orgasm that is as powerful as a waterfall engulfing his body. 

About the Poet

Witter Bynner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1881. He graduated from Harvard University in 1902. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter and, later, as the assistant editor of McClure’s magazine.

Bynner published his first poetry collection, An Ode to Harvard (Small, Maynard, & Co.), in 1907. He was also the author of New Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960); Take Away the Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947); The Beloved Stranger (Alfred A. Knopf, 1919); Tiger (M. Kennerley, 1913); and several other poetry collections.

Bynner was also known for his works in translation, including The Way of Life According to Laotzu: An American Version (John Day Co., 1944), and a literary biography, Journey with Genius: Recollections and Reflections Concerning the D. H. Lawrences (J. Day Co, 1951).

In 1916, Bynner and Arthur David Ficke published Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, under the pseudonyms Emanuel Morgan and Anne Krish. The book included poems and a manifesto on “spectrism,” a parody of Imagism. In 1918, Bynner admitted that the book was a hoax.

In 1922, Bynner settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his partner, Robert Hunt. He died there on June 1, 1968.