Grievance

All these years I have remembered a night
When islands ran black into a sea of silk,
A bay and an open roadstead set to a shimmer like cool, white silk
Under an August moon.
Trees lifted themselves softly into the moonlight,
A vine on the balcony glittered with a scattered brilliance,
The roofs of distant houses shone solidly like ice.
Wind passed,
It touched me.

The touch of the wind was cool, impersonal;

The fingers of the wind brushed my face and left me.

I remember that I shivered,

And that the long, continuous sound of the sea beneath the cliff ik
Seemed the endless breathing of the days I must live through alone.
I grieve for that night as for something wasted.
You are with me now, but that was twenty years ago,
And the future is shortened by many days.
I no longer fear the length of them,
I dread the swiftness of their departure.
But they go -- go --
With the thunderous rapidity of a waterfall,
And scarcely can we find a slow, cool night
To consider ourselves,
And the peaceful shining of the moon

Along a silken sea.