Love, how often I loved you without seeing- without remembering you
-not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
in the wrong place, scorching in the hot noon,
but I loved only the smell of the wheat.
Or maybe I saw you, imagined you lifting a wineglass
in Angol, by the light of the summer’s moon;
or were you the waist of that guitar I strummed
in the shadows, the one that rang like an impetuous sea?
I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
I broke into houses to steal your likeness,
though I already knew what you were like. And, suddenly,
when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
stopped: you stood before me, you took dominion like a queen:
like a wildfire in the forest, and the flame is your dominion.