Your hand was trying the keyboard,
your eyes were following the impossible
signs on the sheet: and every chord
was broken, like a voice in grief.

I noticed everything around turn tender,
seeing you helpless, blocked, unsure
in the language that was most your own:
beyond the half-shut windows the bright sea shone.

In the blue square butterflies
danced fleetingly: a branch shook in the sun.
Not one thing near us found its words,
and your sweet ignorance was mine, was ours.
(1924)

This Issue

August 15, 1985