Summer 1967

Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses Whom the foolish might compare to daffodils, Not seeing how a dead grandmother in each one governs her limbs, Darkening the bright corolla, using her lips to speak through, Or that a silver torque was woven out of The roots of wet speargrass. The young are mastered by the Dead, Lacking cunning. But on the beaches, under the clean wind That blows this way from the mountains of Peru, Drunk with the wind and the silence, not moving an inch As the surf-swimmers mount on yoked waves, One can begin to shake with laughter, Becoming oneself a metal Neptune. To want nothing is The only possible freedom. But I prefer to think of An afternoon spent drinking rum and cloves In a little bar, just after the rain had started, in another time Before we began to die — the taste of boredom on the tongue Easily dissolving, and the lights coming on — With what company? I forget. Where can we find the right Herbs, drinks, bandages to cover These lifelong intolerable wounds? Herbs of oblivion, they lost their power to help us The day that Aphrodite touched her mouth to ours.