“So many unlived lives,” she said; and idle
As gulls in their sleepy drift, a hot and somber
Autumn day in umber, we talked of things
Beyond the fountains of the moon, and walked
Without a place to go, for we were free—
Within the shadow of a prophecy.
“Those marriages of flesh and dream that stand
Before no altar of reality
Have consummation only in a wish.
And what of you and me who drink from springs
Whose waters never cloy but drown all sense
Of urgency? We walk and watch the river
And the days, and lean an ear to find
A messages in the mumbling of the wind.”
Idle as morning and the putting-on of clothes,
Idle as noon with thoughts that never reach
The empty page, languid as shapeless night
In meditations flying up among
The stars and sinking, past forgetfulness,
In dreams—we saw the squirrels and the children
On the lawns for whom not games, but real
Tears alone, are strange; the water’s cargo
Of monotony, we saw, a bench,
A tramp who rose and went, the chasing cop—
All flashed vivid as figures on a screen,
But who could know that there was life within?