Or Can It Never Be

Or can it never be
for us?

And what if love’s a trick?
Who’ll salvage our lives
if gathering gloom buries us
in the certainty of Good,
unreal perhaps,
and of Evil throbbing very close?

What if hope dies
and Babel rises?
What torch will light
earth’s pathways?

If blue is dream
what then innocence?
What awaits the heart
if Love bears no arrows?

If death is death,
what then of poets
and the hibernating things
no one remembers?
Sun of our hopes!
Clear water! New moon!
Hearts of children!
Rough souls of the stones!
Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars
and all roses are
as white as my pain.