LI. two hesitating lovers

 

a cigarette burn on the hard-packed
snow path where the lovers hesitating
kissed before the inevitable night,
held hands, wrapped in white rings
of smoke again together disappeared
like fugitives as morning comes

or months ago now, in a July dusk,
rolled-up pink paper handkerchiefs
stained with tobacco and lipstick,
got rid of two bloody butts more,
hushed their ear against the bark,
his eye-pupil full of unlikely glance

I heard him naming from a distance
clusters of stars, the Great Ascendant
and Little Dipper’s fate, switched on
like milky chandeliers low, the Lynx
gazing, guard behind her silk foulard

what leaves arranged themselves
in a resin smell on their shoulders?
faces bowed, they stopped to speak
where they’d disappear again, gently,
in the stillness of the black grass
as the awful day like others more began

willow twigs, slid down shrunk threads
of wind, scratch, shift the whole earth-
weight of sky onto frozen sheeted grass;
the volunteers sweep residues of bark
and berries among hisses of brakes,
drip-drop oil from exhaust pipes,
diesel engines mattering at red lights

as the traffic’s passing by
nothing has to stay