I
        Lie still, beloved, while my thirsty eyes
        Drink up thy image and stamp it on my brain.
        Turn thy head a little...now once again
        Against the backdrop of this night that dies,
        Turn it, so that while love lives no demise
        Can come to thee.  The acid of my pain
        Will etch thee in deathless youth.  In vain
        Will age assail thee no matter how it tries.
           Know now that immortality is thine.
           Never believe the lies of crawling years,
           Of withering flesh.  The alchemy of tears
           Will keep thy thinning blood like richest wine.
              Deny the tomb; heed not the tolling bell;
              Long not for Paradise nor fear for Hell.

                                II
       There is no slamming of a door, and yet
       The room resounds with loss.  I feel you go
       With ears more tuned to absence than you know.
       But I will like in warmth a while, forget
       The long delirium that waits out there.  I'll set
       A dam around my mind, deny the blow,
       Shut out the silence with a song.  The slow
       Seep of solitude I'll staunch with swaths of net.
          No longer can your going be denied.
          The echo of your voice, your scent, your breath
          Crowd all about me.  How well I know this death,
          Beloved, but would you had not died!
             Even as my heart cries out, "Arise! Arise!"
             I lay the bitter coins against your eyes.

                                 III
       How long will Sorrow feast with his brother Pain?
       Too long already do they glut their maws
       And lick their drooling lips and flex their claws
       And probe with greedy tongues the crannies of the brain.
       You deathless, legendary beasts, so often slain,
       When will you cease to rise on noiseless paws
       To stalk the thirsty hart that fearful draws
       Its meager draught upon the hostile plain?
           Be warned:  even so as you come back to life,
           So does the wounded heart, renewed in strength,
           Summon fresh blood, recall its beat and, at length,
           Aburst with refound love will give you strife for strife.
              Then will your loathesome bellies, hunger-lean
              Range the gladsome earth for other bones to clean!

       April or May, 1948