Xvi

It is true, as someone has said, that in A world without heaven all is farewell. Whether you wave your hand or not, It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice, Hating what passes, it is still farewell. Farewell no matter what. And the palms as they lean Over the green, bright lagoon, and the pelicans Diving, and the glistening bodies of bathers resting, Are stages in an ultimate stillness, and the movement Of sand, and of wind, and the secret moves of the body Are part of the same, a simplicity that turns being Into an occasion for mourning, or into an occasion Worth celebrating, for what else does one do, Feeling the weight of the pelicans' wings, The density of the palms' shadows, the cells that darken The backs of bathers? These are beyond the distortions Of change, beyond the evasions of music. The end Is enacted again and again. And we feel it In the temptations of sleep, in the moon's ripening, In the wine as it waits in the glass.