Since eternity is death, I’ll take this hour as my bride,
This hour! When the light of the sky is leaving
And beauty begins to coincide with light’s deceiving
In that hour when all the phantom lights begin to be lit inside.
This bride of mine shall be beautiful, in the same hour
When youth and its maturity mix with time—
To land in a splash, and linger in leaves of leafy rhyme
After leaping by the smoke-exhaling river and perfume-damaged flower.
Someone laughs. The blessed know when it comes,
The hour when the child is no longer a child,
And this is when you lie down in the wild
And weep, and your heart plays eternal drums.
There is an hour when some of my dreams come true—
An hour I spend dreaming of an hour, lost in those hours
When I made rhymes, missing you,
As I smile, pretending there is an island which has eternal flowers.
I will decide on this hour—no other hour but this.
That hour? When I called out your name
In urgency? I remember that hour. The shame.
I want this hour—the holy hour when I hardly look at you and kiss.
I was hurt by that urgent hour. I called you.
I called you again. You didn’t respond.
I ran the entire length of the pond.
Thank God hours like that are few!
The hour I choose will be holy, and filled with treats,
Like Christmas when I was young.
The trembling holy days when the holy songs were sung
And life lived, and we read Keats.
The bride climbs the hill.
All her friends are crying, as if it were a sacrifice.
Do not weep, friends! We’ll kiss you and kill
Your fear. And serve you cold drinks with clinking ice.
Within this hour, I shall be with the bride
Who in the outdoor lamplight wakes
Calmly, as if she were death life gently shakes
And she were curious to come inside.
This will be the hour, gleaming,
Defying eternity and its length!
The delicacy of the hour its strength—
A dreamy hour, before the delicate sleeper lies dreaming.
I decide—after hours of thought—my hour will be the one
When night is blue along the long earth, but not yet all.
We don’t need to know how the motion of the sun—
Look! Has made the large and gold look so sad and small.
And now the bride comes down in the shadowy blue
And everyone is weeping, and we
Do not believe—who can believe anyone is true?
In this hour I am marrying eternity.
