The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine,
The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,—
           O, I am far from home!

The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air,
And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,—
           When will the good ship come?

The wretched stumps all charred and burned,
And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,—
           Why is the world so old?

The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky
Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly,—
           Where are the dead untold?

The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog,
The huge stranded hulk and the floating log,—
           Sorrow with life began!

And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore,
O the wind, and the wind, for evermore!
           What will become of man?

the way it ricocheted—a boomerang flung 
from your throat, stilling the breathless air.

How you were luminous in it. Your smile. Your hair 
tossed back, flaming. Everyone around you aglow.

How I wanted to live in it those times it ignited us 
into giggles, doubling us over aching and unmoored

for precious minutes from our twin scars—
the thorned secrets our tongues learned too well

to carry. It is impossible to imagine you gone, 
dear one, your laugh lost to some silence I can’t breach,

from which you will not return.

^{for Fay Botham (May 31, 1968–January 10, 2021)}

Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.

But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.

I shall never have any fear of love, 
Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,
Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never hesitate to go down
Into the fastness of its abyss
Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.

Never shall I dread love’s strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never draw back from love
Through fear of its vast pain
But build joy of it and count it again.
I shall never have any fear of love.

I shall never tremble nor flinch
From love’s moulding touch:
I have loved too terribly and too much
Ever to have any fear of love.

Love in a garden of poppies
Playing at living life,
Love with smiles in her speech,
Love dancing at dawn
In a garden of flushed pink poppies.

Love, unsmiling now,
At noon in the garden of poppies,
With a laugh under her eyelids,
Fear deep in her eyes,
And tangled with her hair,
Sighs and a struggling joy.

Love, with a dim, strained face,
At night in the garden of poppies,
Her lips crushing the bloom
From the fairest flower there.
Love drunk with the wine
She has drawn from the poppy’s heart:
Love with death at her breasts.

Love at the end of night
Shaded by drooping poppies;
Love with scattered hair
And strange stains on her lips.
Love with death at her breasts.

Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness.
Touch me with your hands a little,
Kiss me, as you lean above me,
With your cold sadistic kisses;
Wind your hair close, close around me,
Pain might dissipate this blankness.
Hurt me even, even wound me,
I have need of love that stings.
Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness.
So that I may laugh at things.

Remember me when I am gone away,
   Gone far away into the silent land;
   When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
   You tell me of our future that you planned:
   Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
   And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
   For if the darkness and corruption leave
   A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
   Than that you should remember and be sad.

The first cold rains scurry down the gold
tipped September elms. I know

she will not be in her bedroom, a room
I realize I have hardly entered

these last few years, the door so rarely
unlocked. But walking by with a basket

of laundry for my son, I am pulled
by a thread, I think, of her perfume

adrift in the hall, her door ajar, a window
that must be cracked to the cross breeze.

I set the basket down. The white door
turns on its hinges with a whisper

of my fingers and I step through. Her ceiling
LEDs are not lit, and her desk is not

a mess of bowls and mugs, books and
oil paints No aluminum wrappers from chips

and protein bars. Her purple blanky does
not hang at the edge of her unmade bed.

No, the bed is made. The closet, half open,
is not quite empty. And not balled on the floor,

the tie-dyed T she so often wore to sleep.
When I catch myself in the floor length

mirror, I’m not as small as I imagined I’d be.
No, I don’t look different at all. I’ve lost

now, her scent, that curl of flower that must 
have slipped past me like a wraith, 

like a breath of days spun through years, 
like a rain that hushes the silence.