Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?

YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us,

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure

NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree

Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye—balls and my eyes w…

The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower— the hepaticas, wide—spread under the light

White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted. O silver,

Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone

Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,