SPRINGTIME

The allusive garden is blurred with delays
and the heart awakens to the last things.

A breath of victrolas
blows its glassy murmurs
toward us.

Poets discuss the day’s withdrawal.

Vagrant streets return from exile.

A faint hope carried me away to her caresses;
her sudden image thrills me to the depths;
her whiteness nests in the latent evening,
and while she loosens her bosom of sighs
trees illuminate our cosmic secret.

Absence is the perfume she leaves on my chest.
I lose that absence in the thicket
of modern life,
and I return once again,
to the playing field with its authentic moons.

I wager her smile in the game of poker,
musical interpretations inundated with tears.

When I place the voucher of my farewell
in her hands,
somnambulist express trains
see our shadows off,
and the seasickness of ports within the heart.

(Springtime ticks off
its lessons).

All of a sudden the obscure denouement of the cell.

I will compromise with birds over her bleeding remembrance.