I made a slow lament for you, lost magic
Of schoolboy love and dreams in shadowed places,
Where passed in visible parade, the tragic
Desires of vanished gods and women’s faces.

On violins beneath long undisputed
New England orchards sombred by the spirit
Of endless autumn, I awoke the muted
Strings of your lament, but none could hear it.

Except, perhaps, one passerby, who skirted
The upland fields in that avoided spot;
And, marvelling at the music in deserted
Orchards, hurried on, and soon forgot.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

There’s little to have but the things I had,
    There’s little to bear but the things I bore.
There’s nothing to carry and naught to add,
    And glory to Heaven, I paid the score.
There’s little to do but I did before,
    There’s little to learn but the things I know;
And this is the sum of a lasting lore:
    Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

And couldn’t it be I was young and mad
    If ever my heart on my sleeve I wore?
There’s many to claw at a heart unclad,
    And little the wonder it ripped and tore.
There’s one that’ll join in their push and roar,
    With stories to jabber, and stones to throw;
He’ll fetch you a lesson that costs you sore—
    Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

So little I’ll offer to you, my lad;
    It’s little in loving I set my store.
There’s many a maid would be flushed and glad,
    And better you’ll knock at a kindlier door.
I’ll dig at my lettuce, and sweep my floor—
    Forever, forever I’m done with woe—
And happen I’ll whistle about my chore,
    “Scratch a lover, and find a foe.”

                                    L’ENVOI:

Oh, beggar or prince, no more, no more!
    Be off and away with your strut and show.
The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core—
    Scratch a lover, and find a foe!