and smiling you answer “everything
turns into something else, and slips away. . . .
(these leaves are Thingish with moondrool
and i’m ever so very little afraid”)
i say
“along this particular road the moon if you’ll
notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You
don’t believe? look back. (Along the sand
behind us, a big yellow dog that’s . . . . now it’s red
a big red dog that may be owned by who
knows)
only turn a little your. so. And
there’s the moon,there is something faithful and mad”
III
along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot, whispering like a drunken man
who(at a certain corner, suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
awake
being not asleep, elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner
--“Ici?”--“Ah non, mon cheri; il fait trop froid”--
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind bringing
rain and leaves, filling the air with fear
and sweetness. . . .pauses. (Halfwhispering. . . .halfsinging
stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)
when you were in Paris we met here
IV
our touching hearts slenderly comprehend
(clinging as fingers, loving one another
gradually into hands) and bend
into the huge disaster of the year:
like this most early single star which tugs
weakly at twilight, caught in thickening fear
our slightly fingering spirits starve and smother;
until autumn abruptly wholly hugs
our dying silent minds, which hand in hand
at some window try to understand
the
(through pale miles of perishing air, haunted
with huddling infinite wishless melancholy,
suddenly looming) accurate undaunted
moon’s bright third tumbling slowly
V
if i have made,my lady,intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body’s whitest song
upon my mind--if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy--if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
--let the world say “his most wise music stole
nothing from death”--
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Non-standard spelling retained.
In the original on Page 46, the poem “this evangelist” is missing a
line from the third stanza. That stanza in other editions is:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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