Beloved

You, lost from the start,
Beloved, never-achieved,
I don't know what melodies might please you.
I no longer try, when the future surges up,
to recognise you. All the vast
images in me, in the far off, experienced, landscape,
towns, and towers and bridges and un-
suspected winding ways
and those lands, once growing
tremendous with gods:
rise to meaning in me,
yours, who escape my seeing.

Ah, you were the gardens,
ah, I saw them with such
hope. An open window
in a country house - and you almost appeared,
near me, and pensive. Streets I discovered -
you'd walked straight through them,
and sometimes the mirror in the tradesman's shop
was still dizzy with you and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. - Who knows, if the same
bird did not sound there, through us