Classic Poem

Dead are those girls - had breasts like water-lilies;
And the pond so cool with grass and moist snails-
Small; - but beyond knee-deep water was the storm.

Dead the friends; - evenings no longer deepen
Spacious and slow, in glad verandahs,
Nor the talk is tightly tossed, like rafts upon the waves -
A game; - but leading upto voyages.

And the animal's cave is closed. No bribes can open the door.
Reduced to a worm is the tiger's redness.
No more the warm wet flow of the stupid child.

Only while the rain
Blurs the trees where witches shake their hair,
And the walls of coupling cats grows sharp like needles-
At midnight, upon the pavement
Is left a heart,
A stranger
A raw lump of feeling slow to learn.