To a Dead Lover

By Louise Bogan

The dark is thrown

Back from the brightness, like hair

Cast over a shoulder.

I am alone,

Four years older;

Like the chairs and the walls

Which I once watched brighten

With you beside me. I was to waken

Never like this, whatever came or was taken.

The stalk grows, the year beats on the wind.

Apples come, and the month for their fall.

The bark spreads, the roots tighten.

Though today be the last

Or tomorrow all,

You will not mind.

That I may not remember

Does not matter.

I shall not be with you again.

What we knew, even now

Must scatter

And be ruined, and blow

Like dust in the rain.

You have been dead a long season

And have less than desire

Who were lover with lover;

And I have life—that old reason

To wait for what comes,

To leave what is over.

Copyright Credit: Originally published in Poetry, August 1922.

Source: Poetry (August 1922)