When you asked her, or imagined her, in the lamplight to kiss, you were in that momentary state more fortunate than others. And yet it cannot help but be like this. What can the world do if it comes from nothing? But be true to that nothing? After loving, at last, pictures, emergencies, excitement, move, with remembered sounds, floorboards creaking, sighing, one after another, into the past. Dear afternoon, or should I call you evening? in the evening, nothing but the evening, when you were most beautiful? You knew I was staying because all that I loved--- you knew, then, I loved--- where evening thoughts were straying, my upper back on the pillow, the back of my head on the wall, my feet near the edge of the bed (back then I was tall) wanting more than thoughts, contemplation surely more than this, if philosophy were a dream. You knew I was thinking: how long can this---escaping nothing---be our theme? How long? How long, indeed? Thoughts were physical, their length physical, physical in every sense. The physical poem expressed to both you and her my highest need: first, the length of the poem, second, it containing this, your sovereign theme.
Pushing from blue into more darkness, the darkness arguing for an hour before returning to blue (the blue of the blue flower) crying, "hold tight to what is true! The poem is about to speak." Rosalinda! Stay! Evenings, or the morning light, or the mist, or the new.
