They rise up blacker than childhood.

Had you died when we were together I would have wanted nothing of you.

Come here
Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Night covers the pond with its wing.

They rise up
blacker than childhood.

This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead.

I hear the witch’s cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.

you above them, wounded and dominant.

I am no longer young. What
of it? Summer approaches, and the long
decaying days of autumn when I shall begin
the great poems of my middle period.

I have cast off—the sunlight
chipping at the curtains
& the wicker chairs
uncovered, winter after winter,
as the stars finally
thicken & descend as snow

There is a soul in me
It is asking
to be given its body

I heard my name
not spoken but cried out

And you never say
Leave me
since the dead do not like being alone.

Had you died when we were together
I would have wanted nothing of you.

It is night for the last time.
For the last time your hands
gather on my body.

Tomorrow it will be autumn.
We will sit together on the balcony
watching the dry leaves drift over the village
like the letters we will burn,
one by one, in our separate houses.