‘DAY’S DECLINE’

The crimson fires of our lives fading,
we lift the festival wreaths from our brows
with their unkempt leaves and fallen petals,
and then, in silence go down to the rivers.


     We stand at their edge as the day declines,
our eyes following the course they run —
the forsaken and proud without end in their loneness.


There in the current of reddish twilight,  
astonished, we see how the flowers come,
white blossoms
gently carried on the face of the water —
swept from a joyful garden’s border                    
with laughter, at noon.


And we know that our youth has drifted past.
And as its memories grow sweet within us,
the darkening shadow of the willow’s sorrow looms.
But over the hills, on high, star after star appears
hallowing a vast and alien night,           
and an evening breeze grazes us, and moans,
                  as though on black violins.

DAY’S DECLINE