For Arl
(1)
I read your poems you told me
Enumerating names that belong only to ladies
So you leaf through the memory
Cached in words in search of my ambiguities
And I laughed through the night
At your mortal frailty, for how could I write
Of love random after your flight
That crippled me so badly I wouldn't trust light
Nor song, nor pure flower bloom
Beauty is a tragic thing you know, to behold it
Is to be intimate with hope's doom
How could I love after you, I had no spirit for it
For when you were gone I saw long
Miles alone of desert sands that span from dawn
To bitter night of the subtle wrong
Where lynched and quartered my heart was drawn.
(2)
Lady, you are back again, and this tree
You left so green and full of leaves
Have shed them brown in wilted poetry
And I think the cold wind also deceives
For look at the grass
The same thing happened when the sun
In torrid summer pass
Ice or fire, I lament both and trust none
O remember now to read me like a parable
I do not keep my meanings plain in sight
On the surface meet me where I am affable
You are forever to me an eternal delight.
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