And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul. And after a time under the lamp a man Begins to read a letter having no poem to read. And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse Dampened by rain--it's a dying mind that writes What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks. And a sickness enters our hearts. The jewelled hands Clutch at the arms of the chairs--about the room One hears the parting of lips, and a nervous shifting Of feet and arms. And I look up and over The reader's shoulder and see the name of the writer. What is it I see? The name of a man I knew! You are an ironical trickster, Time, to bring After so many years and into a place like this This face before me: hair slicked down and parted In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness, Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes. Such was your look in a photograph I saw In a silver frame on a woman's dresser--and such Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone! And then As a soul looks down on the body it leaves-- A body by fever slain--I look on myself As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read: I enter a box Of a theater with Jim, my friend of fifty, I being twenty-two. Two women are in the box One of an age for Jim and one of an age for me. And mine is dressed in a dainty gown of dimity, And she fans herself with a fan of silver spangles Till a subtle odor of delicate powder or of herself Enters my blood and I stare at her snowy neck, And the glossy brownness of her hair until She feels my stare, and turns half-view and I see How like a Greek's is her nose, with just a little Aquiline touch; and I catch the flash of an eye, And the glint of a smile on the richness of her lips. The company now discourses upon the letter But my dream goes on: I re-live a rapture Which may be madness, and no man understands Until he feels it no more. The youth that was I From the theater under the city's lights follows the girl Desperate lest in the city's curious chances He never sees her again. And boldly he speaks. And she and the older woman, her sister Smile and speak in turn, and Jim who stands While I break the ice comes up--and so Arm in arm we go to the restaurant, I in heaven walking with Arabel, And Jim with her older sister. We drive them home under a summer moon, And while I explain to Arabel my boldness, And crave her pardon for it, Jim, the devil, Laughs apart with her sister while I wonder What Jim, the devil, is laughing at. No matter To-morrow I walk in the park with Arabel. Just now the reader of the letter Tells of the writer's swift descent From wealth to want.