In the twilight filled with late, late roses,
Camellias, sasanqua, not yet taken by the frost,
I wonder what order, and disorder, the coming night imposes.

All afternoon on the sunporch I sat naked in the sun,
Thinking of things composed, imposed, myself a kind
         of flower,
Late, late, but not yet overblown, irremediably done.

The night, of course, will have a place for me:
Order, disorder—the huge, hybrid, cosmic plan—
I remember the shining youth standing by a brilliant sea,

Also naked, feeling like some growth, some product
        of the water—
Ah, that blue, blue garden of long ago,
Promising to be fertile for all my dreams no matter,

No matter what. Now this formal matrix and the mellow
        tan:
I could drown heavily, if I want to, in accumulated
        dreams
Without much more accomplished, perhaps, than that a boy
       became a man.

The night is so full. So fulsome?—How should one behave?—
I sit among flowers, naked, summon the glamorous early sea,
And lift one gilded arm above that blue, that dark,
        oncoming wave.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 14 Number 8, on page 38
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