Lest I Forget, Love.

Lest I forget, love, I have loved thee
When thy eyes were looking skyward
at horizons only they could see
When thy arms grew weary from bearing
weights untold, to carry mine and me;
I shall not proclaim to have understood
The darkness rising in thy throat
Like mist o'er the hidden, silent wood
Or river where soft dead things float;
But not understanding notwithstanding, love,
I have loved thee.


For what? For love's sake; for a child's sake,
For the moon that did not forsake the sky when his clouds gathered low and nigh-'s sake
For the prism's light over waters bright-'s sake
in a world we once glimpsed, half-asleep: half-awake;
To what do we hold when the starlight once bold
Recedes in the garish light of day
and fades before nightmarish fears of old?

-To the children who used to play,


long past the meeting of lips.


For before the fall there was Eden,
and an Earth before the apocalypse.