3:

You asked, "Is this goodbye?" and I, thinking
Goodbye, said, "Perhaps, see how you feel
About it here." I touched my heart. Again
I summoned you, I heard, "Friday, lunch at twelve."
From stable spread, or sandwich on a rock
Was skinny flesh devoured of promised noons:
"Goodnight, the fast is broken in the mind."

4:

Again goodnight, the sleepy lips have said,
As in mind-marrow looms our last farewell,
Tonight evoked of death's too false aubade.
Do you remember how a leaf once fell
Without a sound of falling to your hair?
You smiled, unknowing, as this leaf I laid
Within my wallet near a dry flower --
Cold winds have borne away that Autumn's red.
I count again the dust of broken cells
That chiselled of my flesh lie in the earth
Among such leaves and burrs -- my former self
And all the selves I seemed to you in youth.
Now brothers, too, are lost in dust of acorns
Where we late fallen lie among the stones.

5:

With westward eyes the suns arise,
The morning, morning-star, the rain:
As watchers come
The earthfed steers upon the range
Distort the dry grass horizon:
No weed, nor wind, nor dew, nor trees.

As if to nod, nor could he speak, so swift
He flew. And Night he lost behind a cloud.

### III: If Sleep Restores

#### 1:

Hollowly, at no moon, dogs bark,
Baying in sense of moon, cloud-scARfed,
Webbed by some monstrous spinneret;
The bitch, sterile, dying, wakens
A lean and carrion shade: herself.
Dawn brings earth, spinning shell in shell:
Within six planes of yellow pine
Belligerent insect-forms persist,
Opaque, but soon by day define
Framed pictures on the wall.

#### 2:

Whose hands you fold in sleep are yours,
And life for life as living is.

Some, coming to the ocean, see
The waves, and some the sea and rocks.

Or seek the mountain for its iron,
And gold as sand in river-streams,

Where tree-green rivers turn to smoke
That makes them of the air a cloud:

Loft-high the lichens blow away
To oaks some want to kill, and elms.

(#)

3:

By flowers, if flowers you bear,
I know of you. By wordy signs
Recalled of parting and by tokens
Of active thought, I know you live.
Or dying -- from sight withdrawn --
Such sounds as you have whispered,
And rain, long dried of hair, again
Will summon you, as live as mind.
And if your child I meet one day
In gardens unrecalled, in the frail
Etching of her step I shall discern
Your foot, unknown of these years.
And sometime I see your self
Escaping in a crowd. Night comes --
No dark I called -- and your return
Bespeaks in the sandaled sleep.

4.

Handfulness as you trim the wick,
and dark you blow it out, and dark
the room, lights on the bay. And wind
that wets the fingers as you lift
the sash, and wind that blows your hair
across the plant you planted in
its clay. Fingers you speak to books.
Who turns their pages with a sound?
And linen white you smooth with hands
the pillows frame, and close your eyes

(8.)

endlessly to the bay. Quite silent
the breath that breathes your life.
And now the shade is heard, and turns
your body from its place to place
you know in sleep. Men walk in dreams
and avenues unwind. A hedge of trees
of trees is shadow on your face.
Of earth the wind so fully blown
is blowing on your cheeks, black hair,
black shape upon the white --
Long black is night until the day.

5:

You weep for windows that have closed
and houses boarded-up. Why weep
at sound of footsteps dead? You cannot
hear them; only your mind hears,
and they will walk as long your blood
keeps warm. Close the door and lock
it carefully, and do not hear
another sound than your sound.
If weeds abound there where you were
do not weep at poppies and stock
that grow in your new door-yard,
nor lament their wet and neatly
broken soil. Weep not for life,
but go away again and farther.

(9.)

13

IV: If Some Awake

1:

By walls, by dark windows, by dark eclipse:
The ungloved lover and unwed woman
Made resolute or wise:

"Did you give Earth
A man or Caliban?"

Why from the task
Of sand, why from the sea-wrack of the sand,
Why from the beach and the frost of the sea,
Why should you come? What calls? What wind or sea?
What avalanche, what swinging earth quaking
The western deep?

What folded cloud-skirts sweep
Into the rocks' sad chancel to inflame
Your memory?

2:

It is this night that breath unfastens
Nent jointures of the flesh, while tissues waste
In silent camera of courteous flesh.
This night have we, alone, within the tread
Of years, rekhaped no common destiny:
Only our own. It cannot pass, this night.
Yet no night lengthens more than light of stars
Through glass -- a fainter lumen than time past.
Too soon tonight will come again to others:
Children -- will some not differently attired.

(10.)