Water and Stone

PURPLE OF SLEEP

WATER AND STONE

Now let this night go back to the leveling

Of a world too long for love, too willowy

For fastening the great claws of the mind.

You were not one to gather words or find

Colors for those that are deaf, those that are blind.

Nor shall I be a trapper of the free.

I shall not lay a net for the falling stone.

I shall not be the hound that trees the moon.

You are the memory of all things gone,

Of all hours shaped and broken as this one, soon

To lie as dust in time too shadowy

For a shape to rise.

I kneel. I kiss your eyes

To close them, to remember your form as stone

With a statue's sight, with yielding volume bound

To volume.

Let this night at last be found

In the gallery of peace, let it be bound

On weight too slight to bear it.

Let the hound

Steal home in the wind, and cower, and lie to dream

Of a moon at bay in a fever glint of stream,

Curiously held as fish before an otter,

A creature of gold in branches of the water.

Let this night be as stone and chastening water.