("Cassandra, he will say...")

YVES BONNEFOY + GALWAY KINNBLL

Cassandra, he will say, hands empty and painted,

Gaze drawn from lower than any gaze of love,

Receive in your hands, shield in their embrace,

My head already dead where time destroys itself.

The Idea occurs to me that I am pure and that I live

In the high house from which I had fled.

Oh that all might go easily on the shore where I die

Press between my fingers the only book and the fee.

Smooth me, anoint me. Color my absence.

Calm these eyes that did not acknowledge the night.

Lay over me the folds of a lasting silence,

Put out with the lamp a land of oblivion.