Variations [Excerpt]

The butterfly disclosed in your eyes

for an instant was my joy in being

so sorrowed by your refusal. An instant,

a being—and the wall opens its tetric mission

to the fields. Involving your happy 

mirror in my adoring hands I with-

drew the figure of a hero, and you opened the sky

and the wall to my window. Inside

your figure were mirrors, eternal

paradise, my underwater reverie, subjected

to biting of yours distinct from common

phraseology, winter suntan and illusory sign

of your envy.

                               *

    The course of my journey was a delicate flame

of silver, o girlhood that reawakens when

all the ships have lifted anchor! Course of

my girlhood was the river that drilled a silent

mount against a scarlet sky. Thus did the 

dance of death unwind: hours of prayer

and of pomp, the hours entire that break now

upon the bristling journey and damp beach, ice

that moves.

                               *

     All the world's a widower if it's true that you walk still

all the world's a widower if it's true! All the world

is true if it is true that you walk still, all the

world's a widower if you do not die! All the world

is mine if it is true that you are not alive but solely

a lantern to my oblique eyes. Blind was I left

by your birth and the consequence of the new day

is naught but night for your distance. Blind I am 

because you walk still! blind I am that you should walk

& the world's a widower & the world is blind if you walk

still seizing my celestial eyes.