How will my memory remember me?
Will it travel back to the desperate years
When I cried for you those hesitant tears,
Since, as a man, a few tears were enough,
When I loved, but didn’t quite love enough
Your face which penetrated my eyes
With youth and blonde hair the best disguise,
And that disguise even now enough
To make me fall madly in love?
My memory would have the new
Fill it up, but would rely heavily on you.
It would exchange blue eyes for black
As long as love, felt then, comes back,
When I glimpsed your blue eyes
In youthful, dim surmise.
Memory tells me your image is dead,
Like a sound sounding only in my head,
But still you are beautiful as you look down
Into life, stretched out in a long frown.
I pursued, with recklessness, romance,
Too eager, too untutored, to dance.
I drowned my fiery desire in wine
Which led to nothing, when I was done.
Any love I got was by pure chance.
I found nothing, though I ranged
In and out of haunts, to seek one
To make me happy. You changed
Into many, and my memory of many
Is almost enough to make this claim:
I loved enough, though not in your name.
I loved as my memory told me to love;
From the very beginning, you were enough,
Though we did not love, and with a sigh,
Memory plays sadly and vainly in my eye.
I still look, and still see
The merest mist surrounding me.
