Poems

from Ten Songs for a Friend

VII
This mournfulness, this restlessness
the inner convulsions, an endless island,
solitude within, body dying —
all this I owe to you. And they were vast,
these plans — ships
great walls of ivory, fine words,
promises, promises. And it would be December,
a jade horse above the water,
doubly transparent, a line in mid-air —
all this undone by the trapdoor of time
in perfect silence. Some glass mornings
wind, the hollowed soul, a sun I can't see —
 
this too I owe to you.