“A breathless Death is not so cold as a Death that breathes.” – Emily Dickinson

I’m no Dante, lost though I may be,
nor you my Beatrice, just as lost to me.

Yet the passions ring, silent to your ear—
O brooding lyric, lead on! Lo these many years:

In warm ink we poets write
excuses for the darkness of the night.

–

I dreamt your room I once belonged,
where we in solitude thronged,

two confined, chained soul-to-soul:
In me you sought, and found, parole,

though living, dying, always chains—mind
the key I held, fumbling, blind!

Will you let me in? I dare not ask.
Sobriety drinks that bitter flask.

–

Outside, in rain, in heat, in snow,
life passes, tipsy, slow,

and in me rivers, laden, flow—
carry dreams the tombs outgrow.