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Winter Dusks
autumn: island
after Jorge Guillén
Autumn, an island
with a severe
profi le, watches the combers with their crests
that waver, race forward
to their glistening destruction.
A love for line, and
the grapevine is stripped
of its overlapping green
and a small basket
fi lled with clusters
out of -- good luck: sealed in them
a balancing of dreams
about things possible.
From secret high spirits
a clean style; wisdom the more defi nite
as it becomes the more inconspicuous, a plain
branch above the hurrying colors.
________ at eighty-six
This last photograph, for the book jacket,
and you the next thing to the corpse
you will be in a month or so,
the abundant white hair stiff and dull,