Today, the universe is splendid—
Without death, without hope, without brides,
We are grooms of a horse drunk on wine,

The fervent lovers of the austere savants
Adore, in their dotage, each of the sweet
And powerful cats, pride of the house,

One might say your gaze is veiled in thickish fog:
Your mysterious eye (is it blue? or gray? or green?)
Is alternately tender, reverent, and cruel,

Rain falls, fails to irrigate the entire town.
Urged by grandiloquence—or tenebrous cold—
the pale inhabitants of our neighbors’ graveyard