The car arrived that brought you to the place:
As you got out I saw your very groin.
Thus goddesses, nude upon a distant quoin
Reveal their chaste religion to the race.

The aged, usual guests who sit or pace,
By chance I casually wandered out to join:
The car arrived that brought you to the place;
As you got out I saw your very groin.

* * *

The long road greyly striping scarp and vale
Ran from the city to our meeting place.
You came by quieter and more devious ways.
Like beasts, our two cars rested nose to tail.

I left a lie behind to smudge the trail,
And, conjuring up your speculative embrace
(The long road greyly striping scarp and vale),
Ran from the city to our resting place.

Whose lie was it made the sunshine fail,
Who knows? It was a fairly equal case.
Rain started, as I set out to retrace
(Passing at first your face, returning, pale)
The long road greyly striping scarp and vale.

* * *

I rediscovered during our affair
Perceptions that in my Dark Age had gone.
How, say, astonishingly high upon
The spine the fastening of a brassiere.

That every trivial thing in earth and air
Can constitute a mysterious eidolon,
I rediscovered during our affair.
Perceptions that in my dark age had gone

(The prurient disproportion of the bare:
Pinks, so conceived of, nearer cinnamon),
But that the gift of the youthful simpleton
To make dearth richness was in disrepair,
I rediscovered during our affair.

* * *

From the great distance at the end of caring
I saw our weak attempt at happiness;
Of you recalled a certain buttoned dress,
Cringed at my characteristic lack of daring.

The tortuous machinery of pairing
In our case seemed of utter pointlessness
From the great distance at the end of caring.
I saw our weak attempt at happiness

Related only to the lust for sparing
Our lives the terror of complete success.
And gone the absorbing, vital kind of chess
I played to bring about your baring,
From the great distance at the end of caring.