Thou art come at length More beautiful Than any cool god In a chamber under Lycia’s far coast,

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down

The mysteries remain, I keep the same cycle of seed—time and of sun and rain; Demeter in the grass,

Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;

White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,

Weed, moss—weed, root tangled in sand, sea—iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken,

Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…