Goodbye

Your kisses close my eyes and yet you stare

As though God struck a child with nameless fears;

Perhaps the water glitters and discloses

Time’s chalice and its limpid useless tears.

Everything we renounce except our selves;

Selfishness is the last of all to go;

Our sighs are exhalations of the earth,

Our footprints leave a track across the snow.

We made the universe to be our home,

Our nostrils took the wind to be our breath,

Our hearts are massive towers of delight,

We stride across the seven seas of death.

Yet when all’s done you’ll keep the emerald

I placed upon your finger in the street;

And I will keep the patches that you sewed

On my old battledress tonight, my sweet.