THE FIRE
Had you died when we were together
I would have wanted nothing of you.
Now I think of you as dead, it is better.
Often, in the cool early evenings of the spring
when, with the first leaves,
all that is deadly enters the world,
I build a fire for us of pine and apple wood;
repeatedly
the flames flare and diminish
as the night comes on in which
we see one another so clearly—
And in the days we are contented
as formerly
in the long grass,
in the woods’ green doors and shadows.
And you never say
Leave me
since the dead do not like being alone.
HERE ARE MY BLACK CLOTHES
I think now it is better to love no one
than to love you. Here are my black clothes,
the tired nightgowns and robes fraying
in many places. Why should they hang useless
as though I were going naked? You liked me well enough
in black; I make you a gift of these objects.
You will want to touch them with your mouth, run
your fingers through the thin
tender underthings and I
will not need them in my new life.
SEATED FIGURE
It was as though you were a man in a wheelchair,
your legs cut off at the knee.
But I wanted you to walk.
I wanted us to walk like lovers,
arm in arm in the summer evening,
and believed so powerfully in that projection
that I had to speak, I had to press you to stand.
Why did you let me speak?
I took your silence as I took the anguish in your face,
as part of the effort to move—
It seemed I stood forever, holding out my hand.
And all that time, you could no more heal yourself
than I could accept what I saw.
"How can I know you love me unless I see you grieve over me?"
"I kept thinking of how we used to watch television,
how I would put my feet in your lap. The cat would sit
on top of them. Doesn’t that still seem
an image of contentment, of well-being? So
why couldn’t it go on longer?
Because it was a dream."
LAMENT
A terrible thing is happening—my love
is dying again, my love who has died already:
died and been mourned. And music continues,
music of separation: the trees
become instruments.
How cruel the earth, the willows shimmering,
the birches bending and sighing.
How cruel, how profoundly tender.
My love is dying;
my love not only a person, but an idea, a life.
What will I live for?
Where will I find him again
if not in grief, dark wood
from which the lute is made.
Once is enough. Once is enough
to say goodbye on earth.
And to grieve, that too, of course.
Once is enough to say goodbye forever.
The willows shimmer by the stone fountain,
paths of flowers abutting.
Once is enough: why is he living again?
And so briefly, and only in dream.
My love is dying; parting has started again.
And through the veils of the willows
sunlight rising and glowing,
not the light we knew.
And the birds singing again, even the mourning dove.
Ah, I have sung this song. By the stone fountain
the willows are singing again
with unspeakable tenderness, trailing their leaves
in the radiant water.
Clearly they know, they know. He is dying again,
and the world also.
Dying the rest of my life, so I believe.
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