Portrait of a Lady

“I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,	5
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins

Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments, Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks. Now that lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in his fingers while she talks. And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see.” “Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful, after all.” You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel. You will go on, and when you have prevailed You can say: at this point many a one has failed. I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends For what she has said to me? With the smell of hyacinths across the garden Recalling things that other people have desired. Are these ideas right or wrong? My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.