A MARRIAGE IN THE 'SIXTIES
As
solid-seeming as antiquity,
you frown above
the
New York Sunday Times
where Castro, like a walk-on out of Carmen,
mutters into a bearded henchman's ear.
They say the second's getting shorter–
I knew it in my bones-
and pieces of the universe are missing.
I feel the gears of this late afternoon
slip, cog by cog, even as I read.
"I'm old," we both complain,
half-laughing, oftener now.
Time serves you well. That face–
part Roman emperor, part Raimu–
nothing this side of Absence can undo.
Bliss, revulsion, your rare angers can
only carry through what's well begun.
When
I read your letters long ago
in that half-defunct
hotel in Oxford's Magdalen Street
every word primed my nerves.
A geographical misery
composed of oceans, fogbound planes
and misdelivered cablegrams
lay round me, a Nova Zembla
only your live breath could unfreeze.
Today we meet
