After You

... After you, the world is not colored by joy,
nor is my brow set against the brow of the sky.
It is as if this night within my ribs
had never known light, nor the color of radiance.

I ask the heart about you—in me, as in it,
is the bewilderment of silence, and the death of hope.
Where is love? O sweetness of love's day,
the day my wings were in the folds of space.

After you, April keeps no wedding,
nor does the morning spread its blaze of splendor;
as if there were a hoarseness in its throat
in which the sweetness died and the singing choked.

I see the white roads in desolation,
as though winter were living in them.

Summer 1938