Ministrel

Because it will be in the way that I loved you –
What I mean is eyes like two clouds
Settling over a ploughed heart – cleft in twain –
In vain! Because you have left me, and your beauty
Glowed like two clouds strung with pearls,

I came to the weather-vane and I called for rain
To refresh the crops, up-turn the globules of the earth,
Let the heat respire from the soil, and to clean me,
Bring me a shower of fresh juice, scrubbing
The dirt and the dust, the accumulation of sweat that is the price
Of mastery over the earth. But the shallow azure
Grinned and refused the depth of his thunderheads.

So I played the harp, each a bronze string
On studded silver, and from the bow a Naiad’s head
Projected, lips hallowed in the vowel of song,
Crying still for her lost love, for the drowned boy
And the narcissus bloom. Sing a song of our love,
Muse, sing all the flowers strewn, not yet wilted,
At the softness of my feet. But the song

Is not the flight of a sparrow, and I have no wings.
Galatea has left me, but where the horizon parted
To let her slip into absence, that is where the wilting sea
Renews its treacherous oaths, where I gazed at a parting fidelity,
Apart and alone, and thought, “This is the beauty of life.”