Twenty-One Love Poems III

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do timefor years of missing each other.

Yet only this odd warpin time tells me we’re not young.

Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the citylistening for the futureas I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?

And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.

Your eyes are everlasting, the green sparkof the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.

At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.

At forty-five,

I want to know even our limits.

I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
from "Twenty-One Love Poems", written between 1974-1976, later re-published and included as part of another collection written between 1974-1977, "The Dream Of A Common Language."