I walk out of the crowd, Holding my holds close to the chest Like shut doors, a bud Which will not open, shrunk leaves Of a touch me not plant.

Lines of the unspoken conversation Dribble from my pursed lips. So much useless spittle, I think As I spit. A line goes arcing into the cold, Freezing and breaking as it falls to the road.

We didn’t talk. But then what was there To tell or hear? Let everything be A revelation such as this heat of your presence I hold in my clenched fists.

A river, suffering because/ Reflections of clouds and trees/ Are not clouds and trees.

• Milosz

Sun, after three days of dripping Rain, came out young, concealing Its immense age, throwing off glints of forsythia.

You too came at the predestined Hour, a curved jonquil, gazing at the world With two feline eyes of heat.

I was already waiting in the throbbing Light, a book, open and aging On my lap, trying to forget and remember,

That age when I first understood That some truths are lies and vice versa, Or that age when I didn’t know any words.

Beauty, time, leaping shadows, letters, Steamboats, news and feelings arrived with you. And then departed, their horns echoing into the evening.

But now I am here A tree on the bank, suffering because The water in which I see myself at this barely lit hour Is not the water before you came.