West Wind, VIII.

The young, tall English poet—soon to die, soon to
sail on his small boat into the blue haze and then the
storm and then under the gray waves’ spinning thresh-
old—went over to Pisa to meet a friend; met him;
spent with him a sunny afternoon. I love this poet,
which means nothing here or there, but is like a garden
in my heart. So my love is a gift to myself. And I think
of him, on that July afternoon in Pisa, while his friend
Hunt told him stories pithy and humorous, of their
friends in England, so that he began to laugh, so that
his tall, lean body shook, and his long legs couldn’t
hold him, and he had to lean up against the building,
seized with laughter, abundant and unstoppable; and
so he leaned in the wild sun, against the stones of the
building, with the tears flying from his eyes—full of
foolishness, howling, hanging on to the stones, crawl-
ing with laughter, clasping his own body as it began
to fly apart in the nonsense, the sweetness, the intelli-
gence, the bright happiness falling, like tiny gold flow-
ers, like the sunlight itself, the lilt of Hunt’s voice, on
this simple afternoon, with a friend, in Pisa.West Wind, VI.