What more on a summer afternoon
Could I require?
Light without heat, my work-week done,
A free desire,

And the world from my balcony composed
Like a Renaissance
Picture, the elements disposed
With significance

Too obvious to miss: the trees
Are Nature’s beauty;
My notebook the imperious
Summons to Duty.

Neither could Lust’s abrupt demands
Have been omitted:
A sunbathing girl on the next roof stands,
My gaze permitted

As though she did not notice it; and last
The stereo
Is playing Mozart’s movements, fast
Then aching-slow,

A sign for the already adequate
Engrossing Past.
Everything’s given, though I know it
Cannot last—

What one impetuous faculty
Would quickly choose
The others as necessarily
Loudly refuse.

The Body turns to her, the Soul’s at rest
In sexless nature;
Ambition writes, but ...

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