Classic Poem

You will not forswear the bargainings
I briefly risk at evening with your eyes
Lest, faithless of mercy for a little dust,
Some of your soul crack in its brittle lies.

We made a silence, for teacups, once
After cosmic gall had bittered a lidless night,
Then touched the dizzy apples of Acrasia, once,—
Once we were shattered with a storm of light.

Now let peace come out of the hard history
Theocritus might glimpse but never share;
Hold a merciful year, prophet of lips to spend:
Re-string the mirroring plangence of your hair

While I erect an unrevengeful shrine
Of the total business in an evening
(To your shrewd pity), lit by candelabra
Laving the grizzled plateaus of the mind …

This is no song of a restless purchaser
Of griefs, nor harmonics muted for a withered joy:
Style a tablet at every noon time, Lady,
With bold images of a timid boy!