I found you and I lost you, 

   All on a gleaming day. 

The day was filled with sunshine,

   And the land was full of May. 

A golden bird was singing

   Its melody divine, 

I found you and I loved you, 

   And all the world was mine. 

I found you and I lost you, 

   All on a golden day, 

But when I dream of you, dear, 

   It is always brimming May.

                                    I

The colors of the rainbow are fading in the silent
      and distant West, and the heartache of
      twilight trembles within my aching breast.

   For the light of my love has faded like sunbeams
         in the West, and the color of twilight will
         tremble forever in my breast.

                                   II

I think of thy kindness often, when lonesome I feel
      and cold, I have not forgotten our childhood,
      nor your loving words of old.

   And still my sweetest songs of life are floating
         in dreams to thee, like whisperings at eventide,
         across a clouded sea.

                                   III

We two are sitting in the bark, and listen to the
      wavelets’ play, the shore is melting in the
      dark, day’s echoes silently decay.

   Oh life, with all thy hopes so fair, wilt thou
         too float away, like visions rising in the
         air that greet the parting day!

                                   IV

She stands amidst the roses, and tears dart from her
      eyes that like the fragrant roses her soul
      must fade and die.

   He stares at the twilight ocean on the shore of a
         foreign land, a faded rose is trembling
         within his soft white hand.

                                   V

The rushes whisper softly, the sounds of silence wake,
      large flowers like sad remembrance float
      on the dark green lake.

   Were life but like the waters, so bright and calm
         and deep, and love like floating flowers
         that on the surface meet.

                                   VI

The naked trees of autumn grope shivering through
      twilight’s gloom, athwart the whispering branches
      its dying embers loom.

   I dream of life’s defoliation, as I watch with
         silent dread, leaf after leaf departing, like
         hopes long withered and dead.

                                  VII

In haunting hours of twilight dreams restless the
      turbulent sea, and heaves her white wanton
      bosom in endless mystery.

   Dream on, dream on, titanic queen, beloved sea, at
         thy wanton breast, I would find rest
         in endless mystery.

not understanding how we celebrate

Our bodies. Every day we separate.

      — Marilyn Hacker

September, and the great stillness 

of moonless night and cooling air, the city 

in blue pockets in the hills, and just 

under your hands, the current

of what’s forgotten. All week long, while 

you were running, or reading, your forefinger

blurring the type, one season was slipping 

into another, as lovers weave themselves 

across a bed, odor of yeast 

from the beer bread lifting through 

the oven, the dog’s pad cracked, and in

class, you were watching one student 

blink at another. There’s a time 

to believe in love, you’d thought, 

watching her rub her arm hair, and him 

shift in his shirt, but then you believe all

things end, and you’d tried so carefully

to explain what Marilyn Hacker meant,

how we “wake to ourselves, exhausted, 

in the late,” before you thought better

about it, staring down the rows, and cited

the fused limbs, and raised unlettered power

instead, the poem’s words comets’ tails

on blackboard. Now, you are finally leaving 

campus, content this time your heart 

has bettered the howl for sugar, your body 

hot from the work of itself, when you push 

through the glass door into fall—

and you remember a draft which was

just like this once, when, past 

the dorm curfew, Tim was clutching 

your elbows beside a lake, the air cricket

-thick, Cassiopeia encrusted in her collar. 

There is no loneliness as knowing. Years

later, when you were drunk yet again, 

at Le Lido, swimming the booth, 

the waiter—cloudy in his captain’s suit—sat 

with you. The gold-enameled dancer

was still mounting her white horse. He poured     

the champagne. You sipped it softly.

Their muscles erupted into the shivering

other as they strutted circles against

the stage, animal and woman, and you were 

grateful no one said a word. How 

could you have named the chill

of her breasts, the terrible hot fur? 

It was that gift of silence which happens

between strangers, out of country. Then 

you’d walked home, tall cathedrals

bristling in the baubles of their unrung

bells. You’d turned your collar up 

against the coming cold as you turn

up your jacket now, surprised

by the suddenness of the season 

(or your own inattention to the small

shifts), your breath crystal in air—

and each stripe, marking separation

down the asphalt, is lamped

and glistening, eerie as snow, solstice

certain as the short drive ahead, to when

you must walk up to your dark, quiet

house, sink your key into the lock.