For John Ashbery

"How beautiful, how unexpectedly sweet, life would be
if we were not obliged to live it . . ."

Yet once things were different.
The messages brought by the seasons
were part of an absolute truth;
the looks, the gestures, the trivia talk
meant something,
the chance indications
these two with their secret conceit confirm
that love is something more
than a game of longing.

A clear sky
or a handsome man
pouring over a manuscript
(metaphors concocted to contain us)
can't preserve you face in my memory

can't color the charted area
with precision this recollection's shadow
demands.

I ask for more
much more.
A living context that's able to accept me,
a density of light that can reveal
imagination's true possibilities
a specific language whose subtlety's
                command
can give to that dazzle the depth of your
                beauty.

What power can check the gallop
of the disfigured dream vanishing beyond the horizon
what desire can interpret the decisive
                gesture
that nothing can interpret?

The day comes to its end.
We have to remain here.
In the silvery haze
    the soul embeds itself.