Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays. The props crumble; the familiar ways Are stale with tears trodden underfoot. The heart's flower withers at the root. Bury it then, in history's sterile dust. The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.

Love deceived him; what is there to say The mind brought you by a better way To this despair? Lost in the world's wood You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood. The earth sickens; under naked boughs The frost comes to barb your broken vows.

Is there blessing? Light's peculiar grace In cold splendour robes this tortured place For strange marriage. Voices in the wind Weave a garland where a mortal sinned. Winter rots you; who is there to blame? The new grass shall purge you in its flame.

New Year's Morning Got this in the poetry mailing list.

My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands, -- No, -- nor my lips freed laughter since 'farewell', And with the day, distance again expands Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.

Yet, love endures, though starving and alone. A dove's wings clung about my heart each night With surging gentleness, and the blue stone Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.

I was reading Hart Crane today at Borders even though at the end it was too painful to read the next word in each line. He is a poet I had never read and I think who should be read. Consider these lines and go onto voyages into Crane's poetry and life:

And so, admitted through black swollen gates That must arrest all distance otherwise Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments, Light wrestling there incessantly with light, Star kissing star through wave on wave onto Your body rocking! and where death, if shed; Presumes no carnage, but this single change -- Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn The silken skilled transmemberment of song; Permit me voyage, love, into your hands .

Forgetfulness is like a song That, freed from beat and measure, wanders. Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled, Outspread and motionless, -- A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night, Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child. Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree, And it may stun the sybil into prophecy, Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.