Lightheartedness

Intensest heavens –
And there’s no more meaning
Between close lying faces
-It cannot be said-
There is no word
For the darkness overcoming
Every white flower –
Delicate and separate and cold
- Tell me one thing!
Something dull and common
I won’t forget -- before
The world leaves in echoes
Of remembered tears

The daisies in the bowl have shrunk
Like my eyes and heart
And the walls of my room –
Everything familiar is crushed
- The gnomes dance in terror
Over the wilting lilacs
The house has no welcome
-Swallowed by lethe –
I’ll drink your wrists
And forget – Oh blind!
Lie and forget and drown
In bottomless afteryears
Of drinking your lips
- The shade rips mirth
Back to the ecstasy of disquietude
Cross, recross,
One, two, four, three
Talk to me. Sh! They might hear.
We’re alone on this road –
Where the dogwoods drive us mad
-- In terror –-
and the black soil whispers, “hush.”
It’s the shape of these things.