The music was turned up too loud for talking
but everybody talked. Someone I barely knew
was drinking wine and had an arm around me.
The liquid in my glass trembled. This was the year
the chokecherry in the yard grew tall enough
to find the wind, a thing like itself, shifting
and invisible, feeling all the leaves and turning them,
like once you turned my coat collar at the door
to make it even, and then I was ready.

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms, 
Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours 
Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors, 
But showing early lamplight from snug rooms. 
The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists, 
And chimney smoke whirls round with alien grace, 
Heeding geometries of outer space, 
While Fomalhaut peers in through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know 
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents 
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents, 
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow. 
Yet for each dream these winds to me convey, 
A dozen more of ours they sweep away.

The sound of quiet. The sky 
indigo, steeping 
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before 
the air troubled above 
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly 
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.

A white curtain turning in an open window. 

A swan, dipping a white neck in the trees’ shadow, 
Hardly beating the water with golden feet. 

Sorrow before her 
Was gone like noise from a street, 
Snow falling. 

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken
cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.