Upon the stairway, a cloud came wandering and chanced upon you
Strolling down in a long red dress that draped over high heels
And those same stairs we scrambled slowly up.
When the light from the candelabra overhead showed us Your toes, we threw
off our corsets
And brayed like twenty jackasses in the wind,
A full gale, a cold draft in a darkened corridor.
And you said to me, "Drink some water."
So I did, as there was little else to do, bide the time,
Ring the church bell in the tower looking out over a cold country,
Spotted here and there with houses,
Little black blotters symmetrically placed through the brown haze
And the lines of trees, or what we thought were trees,
All of it leading up to the gray dawn sky
To a question about the day and the morality
And the times we were having and else more that cannot here be said.
I came to your door that Sunday, the church bell ringing
In the distance, a foundry for our conscience,
And dressed as I was and you as you were
And all those other things that are laid out on the table
In the unlit dining room, a wood table, a vase of unmentionable flowers,
A curse of man in other adornments: we knew not what they were.
I was burning but no flames adorned me. I had letters
In my pocket addressed to me and to others.
The others were hand written by the maid
Who came by to clean that day? I had no other.
And she helped with, but I was to mail the letters.
You stood at the doorway, your hand draped on the door frame
And it had been written in one of my letters
That your pale face, softly drawn by the darkness behind,
The soft litter of golden glowing palaces
Which was your throne--and no other.
You said, "All this--it is better." We took a walk later down the hedgerow
Lined pathway from your door to an open country
Where we looked for flowers in the fall vegetation.
Birds wheeled from a line of trees east to west.
And then it was winter. And you sighed heavily,
"She tried, she tried, she tried."
Clouds came in from the south and things then got wetter.