Tristan

He wanted to be neither here nor there,

The go-between, lost to the sea's continuous

Music of loss,

Not only the gulls and the gullying swells, but

The reedy shoreline, unchanging, gone-

A tedium, like love's

Intoxication with sameness, all depth given

Over to implication, the shadow

Of his hand

On the shadow of her breast, as the ship

Lurched, sluggish, toward the Cornish coast.

Nothing

Held here, except the surfaces-

Texture, tension, treason-not even longing,

That gull's cry, hovered,

Dazzled with the thin gold of her hair,

Splendor like light on water, illusory

But enough,

Enough, a protest at such unsanctioned, un-

Substantiated plenitude.

He wanted

Most of all not to want, yet to have lost nothing.

He wanted a calm, but she was there,

And the wind fell.