Classic Poem

I

I think what it must be
(at last, after a life cleft
on the complementarity) what
it must be — or have been —
the whole secret and sorrow of man-
woman bodily love:
That the beauty of a woman comes
sub specie aeternitatis — by
virtue of something luminous
and still, something that waits
in one place and is cool and does
nothing, like a jonquil
or an arm of the sea
or from hour to hour the moon;

while a man's is of time —
of motion, the application of force.

And wherever they touch, the one
falls from that tran-
quillity into time,
to attachment and dread of loss;
and the other, from torment in-
to eternity and the bright
indifference of angels. And how
it can be that in one place
love is two different things
I can't answer. But how
is it, in the worst windstorm
of the year — trees crashing
across the road and hail hurled like birdshot
into the windows — there arrives
at the kitchen radio a per-
fect serenity of violins?

II

At that hour over snow
when there are both day- and moon-
light and the trees cast two shadows

I think of you —
how you were of two minds. . . .
I would like to show,

standing beside you,
how the red light and the blue light
are crossing among the con-

volutions of an elm —
that is like the pen-sketch of a brain,
with its regions and lobes,

its Fissure of Orlando —
crossing, unreconciled,
and each tracing on snow

its opposite version (How
clearly they lie, one east,
one west); and tell you:

Nevermind, my dear. We too
cast complementarities. All
our lies likewise were true.