This is what he remembers Of her who left him behind in Another summer much like this:

Those rooms that are fading into A summer darkness, sometime After nine or ten, traffic steady On the road beyond those high Windows, a breeze ruffling pages Of books on pillows, some of which He gave as presents, as flowers to make Up for the stone that clasped the rasp Of his unspeaking throat - and that Calm town in which nothing really Happened, and hence was the cause of slow Despair - without some diversion or Amusement, love divorces itself From romance, becomes too domestic, And too common and comforting.

Now it is only these commonplace Details that remain to form a membrane Over the remains of those days - how Her mouth moved in laughter between Morsels of food, her hair spread across His arm under a willow, a shadowed forest, And how sometimes was domesticated and tied High over her delicate nape in intricate braids. Also humming as hands moved over a stove - an flammable piano - made breakfast, poured Juice, sliced cheese, touched his face sometimes To remind him that he is not stone...

Sometimes when the heart remembers All this, it feels like a book snatched From her hands by vandals to be used As kindling in their forges of bone.

After a night of rain Half of these long avenues Are in shadow

And the foolish heart At the bottom of sleep's Stairwell keeps waking

To Adrienne's footfalls Vanishing, vanishing Into a summer's blaze

Of a life cleaved from A day where it once was, And thus desired to be always:

This first day of summer.

To a watchful moon, and the blood of first azaleas after sudden snow in April, and sleep in the lighted darkness between her breasts among the scent of green lemons. No dreams except those of children lost among dreaming of other older nights, no home either - just the silence of his eyes and deep breathing that she is a witness to, and this waiting for words that he doesn't say, this man, strange and unknown, sometimes even in the tenderest of speech.