After a Fine Day We Found This

On a fine day . . . almost any

sort of song makes itself heard

HOLDERLIN

Whether we looked or not, with a glance

we knew of this again.

With eyes dim in the dusk, we could smile,

the day done away with. How far we came

and our host stood at the window

as if in the moon.

We did not hear a word spoken.

But later we talked of roads and buildings

and no one believed what was heard.

Poppies glowed within the field of wheat.

The town was not far from the garden.

We watching our shadows,

on the yellow ground they would not move

and so we turned and it was nightfall.

The worse began to happen. We watched

as the candle burned when handed to us,

and the glass overturned. We were in

the darkness and the other guests appeared

more alive than ever we had known them.

It is our life to know the lives of others,

to know even our life as another's and answer

when called. We have been a conversation,

but soon we shall be song. Then fireflies

came where there had been poppies.

Theirs was an absence of darkness

that left a popping, which (when blue)

is silent. Then a toast was given

to America. Striped field, stars loosened.

At the gate, while leaving, we looked for a child

and his mother that another guest also searched for.

"Everything takes place backwards here," he said.

We were also puzzled, unable to remember

(the moon set almost as soon as we arrived)

and so we spoke of death as an exhaustion of speech.