Thanksgiving Day, 1969

        I paused to touch your marble steps
        and laud and praise their cold beauty,
        still as intact as glass slippers
        of some disenchanted dancer.
        You trembled to feel my warm hands
        on your frozen feet and begged me
        to caress your withered body,
        and with all my princely kisses
        to ransom you from evil dreams
        of lost beauty and coming death.

        I moved to view you from the side
        on which the rising winter sun
        warmed your youth and still warms your age,
        and where the setting summer sun
        could not reach your countless children
        as they sat in legendary
        afternoons and haunted evenings
        on your now sagging balcony
        and wove dreams of eternal life
        for themselves and you, their mother,
        doomed too, but who outlived them all.
        I stood in awe on the asphalt
        desert of the near market place
        while ghosts leaned on the balustrades
        of twilight and chanted to me
        that I stood where once their garden
        grew and flowers bloomed for bird songs.

        Suddenly they were gay and glad.
        Some ran to fetch their mandolins;
        all sang their serenades to me,
        their guest, standing down below them.

        When the gracious music ended
        you called them back to your cold womb.
        As they went inside they gestured
        good-byes to me and I to them.

        I stopped to touch your marble steps again
        and heard a distant harpsichord within.

        December 27, 1969
        (final revision)