I want to be brief. I want
To have the shape of a boomerang,
Go far off, return, spin wild,
Dangerous, beautiful shapes
In the air; I want to be powerfully small
I am a fire in the fountain, I am a lantern
Swaying in sunset, I am the Four Corners
Facing in and facing out, I am a wind
The Ruins Proclaim the Building Was Beautiful—Arab saying
The ashes of your life
Span the decades like the wake
Of passing birds or clouds,
Visible only to he who can hold
In abeyance the lust for reality.
Dizziness, exhaustion, balance.
Snow on fire, liquid leaves.
Blue gauze, blue blood—
A day poured from a samovar.
I am the moon that refused to rise,
The placid reflection of lunar eyes
Whose lurid stare, like rising tides,
Tickles the Earth and then subsides.
To you, the sudden hope outlined in lips,
I ask the question that fear had ne’er touched:
What myth does explain life’s dance upon a crypt,
The unreal made real, the lost firmly clutched?
Despair stabbed me on the way to delight:
Its jagged blade, forged of hardened tears,
Shore off the jasmine fragrance of the night,
Postponed the puissant dawn for another year.
My bed, that house within a house,
Built of timber from your inner copse, now
Splinters in the dawn, and I muse douse
The kisses destined for your brow,
Lest the dreamer destroy the dream
And repose fall from its narrow beam.
The fallen flaming leaf
Waits for the snow in vain,
Hopes to cool the burning wreath
That leaves its heart in pain
Before the winds of decay
Silence passion’s ecstasy.
Nothing is ever lost;
The rain that fell today
Becomes tomorrow’s frost,
And huddled in the grey
Shroud of a cloudy sky
Every droplet refuses to die.