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.
