Tears dissolve a moment into what hearts can make
Merely memorable, perhaps precious, or even solemn-
A source turned off, a cycle stopped.
And, as the sad rain, falling at four o'clock in the morning
Renews the half-lit hollow streets, and curling smoke,
Emerging from deep beneath shining surfaces, calls
Only losses to mind, only the last sigh-blown
Touch betwixt cloth and skin, only the last condoling
"See? We've really lost nothing tonight, because lite
Is much too complicated,"
only the leaving, and only
Then the continuing rain outside, barely brightening
Streets, just darkening hearts, finally-
So
with the clear-eyed world, freshly washed of vision.
Three naked girls in the shadows of noon, three shallow basins
Open to all the weathers, fall away into flickering
Points of memory, their substance consumed, their surface aflame.
They burn, they burn! So in winter once, I began to trace
Them out again by another unfamiliar route;
Thinking again to regain the withdrawn, the radiant spaces,
The flowered moments and points of joy, I sought my pools,
Cold at my shoulders, the wind, pursuing.
Cold at my feet, the hard, dry ground at the fringe of the Ramble.
Here all the surrounding city is hidden; even in winter
When gray mists seem to condense in bare, unfocused branches,
None of the heights of buildings ringing the park is visible.
There where the intricate paths, crossing themselves and twisting
Mazy configurations out of the asphalt walks,
Was the heart of the Park, with its dells and bridges over the inlet;
There was the final garden, full of the planned disorder
Of the garden regained, forced and sprawling.
Cold at my heart, the climbing slowly west and upward,
Away from one Museum with a painted past behind me
Toward the other's boundless pictures---<:ases of animals stuffed
From which I learned to read all landscapes and to climb
Inside all painted prospects, into their hidden lives.
Cold at my ears, I moved toward the huge, dark halls
Of skull-formed Africa where I had roamed, in childhood,
A wondering traveler along those mental shores ;
Cold at my eyes, I walked and walked.
