You Who Never Arrived

 You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you.
 I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment.
 All the immense
images in me-- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.


You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing.
 An open window
in a country house--, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
 
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.

And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image.
 Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, seperate, in the evening.
.
.

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...