The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

                Between letting go and setting free
There was a difference I assumed
                I was. Graceless. Arrogant. Venomous
As a point. Horsehair slacking. Bow
                Shaking from deep within. Air cut
Without a trace. There was faith, a drawing
                Close, closer, close enough, then

Too close. Hoping, missing, resuming—
                Into the shadows I had taken me
As far as I could. Soul. Soil. Silt. Sullied current
                I proved I could step into once
More. Forest. Mountain. Desert. Blood,
                My resource and recourse. While at war
In my mind, I went farther than I thought—

                Archer, I am my errors. Arching, I erred
In desire. Am I my target? Expect no mercy.
                For better or worse, whatever happens,
I’ll be even better. I’ll be even worse—
                Let’s go. Nobody is expecting us. Get ready.
Gone is the hour of ghosts over the gulf
                Like whales, a memory, breaching surface

From depths unknown, stuck in between
                Land and what is and what if and sea and
I suppose for air. A moment that wasn’t
                This, we turned on. Resplendent. Meet me
At the shore. I aim with my life to prove
                We can be happier than the ones we love.
The difference is distance, set. Crossed. Freed—

Sigh of the Santa Ana through the chaparral clinging to the mountain. Through the sunflowers at night, searching for the sun, along the river no longer a river. The wind kissing the river, its stone face, and making each stone a matchbook. A match. A book on fire. The river a library on fire. The wind a woman running through the valley on fire. Searching. The sunflowers turning toward her. Her nightgown a book turning its own bright pages in the wind. Smoke the color of chaparral. Smoke clinging to her, making her a mountain of smoke. A valley of light. A sigh.

             *

You’re too afraid of who you are to know who you can be. You’re too afraid of being happy. You’re too happy being afraid. You’re afraid you’re happy. You’re afraid, the way a broken bowl gilded and glued back together with gold is still broken, that knowing makes no difference. You’re broken, still, but you’re happy. You’re afraid, too, but still, you’re happy. You’re who you can be, already, whether or not you know. You’re different, already. You don’t need to know to know. You’re ready.

             *

Yesterday, when the cake with thirty candles came out, I thought, closing my eyes, that my wish would be to go back to the moment my mother brought me home to East Mountain View, furnished with only her vanity, the mirror with us waving at us, at once Hello and Goodbye, and that I would wish to hold her bright and broken face, to look at her as she was and not as either of us wanted her to be, telling her as if telling myself that we were doing our best, and yet, today, opening my eyes and looking into my own vanity, smoking a cigarette, the tip like a sunflower scorched from searching and searching still by the light that scorched it, I think, instead, that my wish will be to keep going forward, to see what else will happen with this life, and I think I will.

We met ourselves as we came back 
As we hiked the trail from the north. 
Our foot-prints mixed in the rainy path
Coming back and going forth. 
The prints of my comrade’s hob-nailed shoes 
And my tramp shoes mixed in the rain. 
We had climbed for days and days to the North 
And this was the sum of our gain: 
We met ourselves as we came back,
And were happy in mist and rain. 
Our old souls and our new souls 
Met to salute and explain—
That a day shall be as a thousand years, 
And a thousand years as a day. 
The powers of a thousand dreaming skies 
As we shouted along the trail of surprise 
Were gathered in our play: 
The purple skies of the South and the North, 
The crimson skies of the South and the North,
Of tomorrow and yesterday.

^{translated from the German by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky}

She sits upon my bed at dusk, unsought,
And makes my soul obedient to her will,
And in the twilight, still as dreams are still,
Her pupils narrow to bright threads that thrill 
About the sensuous windings of her thought.

And on the neighboring couch, spread crepitant, 
The pointed-patterned, pale narcissus fling 
Their hands toward the pillow, where yet cling 
His kisses, and the dreams thence blossoming,— 
On the white beds a sweet and swooning scent.

The smiling moonwoman dips in cloudy swells,
And my wan, suffering psyches know new power, 
Finding their strength in conflict’s tortured hour.

Sphinx

 Sie sitzt an meinem Bette in der Abendzeit 
Und meine Seele tut nach ihrem Willen, 
Und in dem Dämmerscheine, traumesstillen, 
Engen wie Fäden dünn sich ihre Glanzpupillen 
Um ihrer Sinne schläfrige Geschmeidigkeit. 

Und auf dem Nebenbette an den Leinennähten
Knistern die Spitzenranken von Narzissen,
Und ihre Hände dehnen breit sich nach dem Kissen
Auf dem noch Träume blühn aus seinen Küssen,
Wie süßer Duft auf weißen Beeten.

Und lächelnd taucht die Mondfrau in die Wolkenwellen
Und meine bleichen, leidenden Psychen
Erstarken neu im Kampf mit Widersprüchen.

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.