A Response to Auden

			
Under the stars, reflected in your eyes,
Your lover finds himself adrift night skies,
But to be lost amidst those sparkling spheres
Is not so bad a way to spend his years.
 
A thousand eyes, they are called, look on him,
And from their vantage one can say they limn
A more perfect picture of he than they,
But for all they see they have naught to say
 
Beneath the shadow of the willow tree
Here, and only now, the roots reveal
In their knotted fingers, forgotten limbs,
Their solid veins wet with dew and life,
 
A clump of dust and dirt, and you
Caress the root with tender pad
Search the ancient, grey-haired bark
For eyes to meet and pain to quell.
 
Up and through the canopy
Over across a bough
The eye finds only glittering spheres
Those eyes that coldly know
 
Umbra and penumbra, one and the same,
From one mouth echoes the other’s name.
You eclipse him, and he acquiesces
Tendrils from the deep, your midnight tresses
 
Unfettered and free, the blackness above,
Your man is slow to admit of his love.
But put on his back, secured from above,
The words fall from his lips, a gasp from a shove
 
She lingers awhile, breathless as the wind,
The sky begins to fall, the stars to dim,
When they flicker, fade, wither, or die
Then the wind will hear my tithe and my sigh