Some would start with those well-tried stocks
Of monosyllabic building blocks,
Inflexibles which, for what they're worth, are
Hardly such as to take us further:
Out of control high words become
Off-putting, pretentious, numb
Whose marble platform soon rejects
One's futures and one's retrospects.
Yet personalities carved in stone
Somehow preserve stress, feeling , tone,
Leaving cool clarions to approve
The higher notes of Life and Love.

But first, as through murmuring minds it sweeps,
Remember how Life plays for keeps
-A game that one can only lose.
Hearing the sputtering of its fuse
One needs to concentrate on Time
(And tomb, its natural pararhyme).

Stroll through those earlier sheaves of verse,
As soon an old harvest-hope recurs
And throbbing with the pulse of years
Through the cleared mist Love re-appears
The sort of love that holds distilled
Those sweeter essences that yield
Flowers, lions, meteors-everything
About which one might dream or sing.

So far we'd barely touched on love
-And first in speechless contexts of
The wild heart racing, with the mind
Dragged half-helplessly behind.
Yet mind and body both survive
Largely through a superlative
Memory-wisdom of heartfelt care
Pervading one's always, one's everywhere,
Out beyond these short verses' scope
Vistas through which one can only grope.
While as they each of them possess
Good halves of their joint consciousness,
The beds and memories they share
Leave little other life to spare...

                *****