74
PARTISAN REVIEW
Merely a theme repeated until the
ultimate earth encloses like a
book a life so similar and so
strange. I live through others,
As
this weather becomes itself by
my being here. I am the horizon
their long look meets; and like
this forest, obscure, sometimes,
The light, and displace air. I am
their atmosphere, odors of night,
and the cycle of their bodies
that
he~itate
at love. Condemned
To abstraction, but loving life,
I am the only stranger, alone
as the cripple's dreamed-of
vice, the prisoner's slow hate.
The half-tones of the season's
hints find recess in the fog
that folds like qualified desire
about the nakedness of trees.
The phallic trunks rise from the
loins of earth. The spontaneous
boughs invite the elements. I
walk alone among the whispering
Grass, anxious and aloof as men...
This strange disparity. It
has been here for a long time.
Love must return.
BYRON
V
AZAKAS
