I.

That was a great night we spied upon 
See-sawing home, 
Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars 
Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze . . . 
Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river . .  . 
Lights dwindling to shining slits 
In the wet asphalt. . . 
Purring lights . . . red and green and golden - whiskered . . . 
Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud . . . 
. . . But you did not know. . . 
As the trains made golden augers 
Boring in the darkness . . . 
How my heart kept racing out along the rails, 
As a spider runs along a thread
And hauls him in again
To some drawing point . . . 
You did not know 
How wild ducks’ wings 
Itch at dawn . . . 
How at dawn the necks of wild ducks 
Arch to the sun 
And new-mown air 
Trickles sweet in their gullets. 

II.

As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird 
That has lately flown across it, 
Yet trembles with the beating of its wings, 
So my soul . . . emptied of the known you . . . utterly . . . 
Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song 
You might have been . . . 
‘Twas a great night. . . 
With never a waste look over a shoulder 
Curved to the crook of the wind . . . 
And a great word we threw 
For memory to play knuckles with . . . 
A word the waters of the world have washed, 
Leaving it stark and without smell . . . 
A world that rattles well in emptiness: 
       Good-by.