my love lies underground
with her face upturned to mine,
and her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
that ended her life and mine.
i dance at the christmas party
under the mistletoe
along with a ripe, slack country lass
jostling to and fro.
the big, soft country lass,
like a loose sheaf of wheat
slipped through my arms on the threshing floor
at my feet.
the warm, soft country lass,
sweet as an armful of wheat
at threshing-time broken, was broken
for me, and ah, it was sweet!
now i am going home
fulfilled and alone,
i see the great orion standing
looking down.
he's the star of my first beloved
love-making.
the witness of all that bitter-sweet
heart-aching.
now he sees this as well,
this last commission.
nor do i get any look
of admonition.
he can add the reckoning up
i suppose, between now and then,
having walked himself in the thorny, difficult
ways of men.
he has done as i have done
no doubt:
remembered and forgotten
turn and about.
my love lies underground
with her face upturned to mine,
and her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss
that ended her life and mine.
she fares in the stark immortal
fields of death;
i in these goodly, frozen
fields beneath.
something in me remembers
and will not forget.
the stream of my life in the darkness
deathward set!
and something in me has forgotten,
has ceased to care.
desire comes up, and contentment
is debonair.
i, who am worn and careful,
how much do i care?
how is it i grin then, and chuckle
over despair?
grief, grief, i suppose and sufficient
grief makes us free
to be faithless and faithful together
as we have to be.
