Vespers: Parousia by Louise Gluck

Sep 04, 2007 18:19

Love of my life, you
are lost and I am
young again.

A few years pass.
The air fills
with girlish music;
in the front yard
the apple tree is
studded with blossoms.

I try to win you back,
that is the point
of the writing.
But you are gone forever,
as in Russian novels, saying
a few words I don't remember --

How lush the world is,
how full of things that don't belong to me --

I watch the blossoms shatter,
no longer pink,
but old, old, a yellowish white--
the petals seem
to float on the bright grass,
fluttering slightly.

What a nothing you were,
to be changed so quickly
into an image, an odor --
you are everywhere, source
of wisdom and anguish.

-------
from The Wild Iris
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