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.