The Lost Tryst

She asks me: where is the color of spring upon your cheeks, and where the morning light
trailing its soft sleeves over you and driving the darkness from you?
And where, beloved, is the proud swaying of the earth when footsteps wove their braids upon it?
I knew your day as richer than all desires, and sweeter than the rapture of the entranced,
upon a wide, swelling, lofty, luminous height whose summits blush red!

I said to her: I had a tryst with love — a generous one, matchless in its dew —
and I lost it... and oh, would that for its sake I had lost my wings, and my visions!
How far away now, that I should feel the fluttering, and feel warmth filling my breast,

and pass the evening upon some inspired fancy out of the unseen, flourishing among the foes...
And how far away now, that I should fashion the letters into a lofty crown upon the parting of poetry's hair,
and call down thought, for its high ends, meanings — a sash laid upon the warp.

Then she said: Am I not myself a tryst that pleases you? I said: Yes indeed —
but it is other than what I lost... so, if you will, walk with me — or do not...
Perhaps we may meet it, if only in imagination, and sing together... She answered: Perhaps?

July 1946