So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
This room, how well I know it.
Now they’ re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.
This room, how familiar it is.
The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right — no, opposite — a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.
I
We aren't serious when we're seventeen.
— One fine evening, to hell with beer and lemonade,
Noisy cafés with their shining lamps!
We walk under the green linden trees of the park
The lindens smell good in the good June evenings!
At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes.
The wind laden with sounds — the town isn't far —
Has the smell of grapevines and beer...
II
— — —
When there is only one old man on earth, lonely, peaceful, handsome, living in unsurpassed luxury, then I am at your feet.
When I have realized all your memories, — when I am the girl who can tie your hands, — then I will stifle you.
When we are very strong, who draws back? or very happy, who collapses from ridicule? When we are very bad, what can they do to us.
Dress up, dance, laugh. I will never be able to throw Love out of the window.
My love is in a light attire
Among the apple trees,
Where the gay winds do most desire
To run in companies.
There, where the gay winds stay to woo
The young leaves as they pass,
My love goes slowly, bending to
Her shadow on the grass.
Talking to my friend Emily, whose drinking
patterns and extravagance of personal
feeling are a lot like mine, I’ m pretty
convinced when she explains the things we do
while drinking (a cocktail to celebrate the new
account turns into a party that lasts till 3
a. m. and a terrific hangover) indicate
a problem of a sort I’ d not considered.
I’ ve been worried about how I metabolize
the sauce for four years, since my second bout
of hepatitis, when I kissed all the girls
at Christmas dinner and turned bright yellow
Their jeans sparkled, cut off
way above the knee, and my
friends and I would watch them
from my porch, books of poems
lost in our laps, eyes wide as
tropical fish behind our glasses.
Their football flashed from hand
to hand, tennis shoes gripped
the asphalt, sweat's spotlight on
their strong backs. We would
dream of hugging them, and crouch
later in weird rooms, and come.
The night reduced to a siren, a sigh:
Beautiful boy on the treadmill
Glimpsed sweating through sweating glass —
My new moon.
Sylvia’ s moon: a smiling skull
Snagged in witchy branches; fossil
Brushed free of blackest earth.
My last moon: an orange ball at rest, for an instant,
On the grey lake.
Wish list: dining set and dresser,
Boombox, thin black tie, boy-
Friend à la Madonna’ s “True Blue”
La la la la la la la
Your moon (tonight): a clouded X-ray.
I stand at a corner and stare up,
Downtown anywhere and between the roil
of bathhouse steam — up there the linens of joy
and shame must be laundered again and again,
all night — downtown anywhere
and between the column of feathering steam
unknotting itself thirty feet above the avenue’ s
shimmered azaleas of gasoline,
between the steam and the ruin
of the Cinema Paree (marquee advertising
its own milky vacancy, broken showcases sealed,
ticketbooth a hostage wrapped in tape
and black plastic, captive in this zone
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produc'd.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduc'd.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
