In Czech Dusk

to R.

At last I hear you from the dark forest-hills
of Middle Europe. Now in early night
your speech, like the scent of trees in autumn, fills
the palace of self. Now every last word right
through mountain-corridors has found a way,
has scaled an ocean-ridge, gone outside time
to re-collect, and come to me today
full of Earth’s peace, for me to catch in rhyme.
At last I hear you, love. Sixty cold days
and half ten thousand miles have chilled this room
of many rooms, in which the self’s ghost plays
its empty game, in age’s gathering gloom.
I seem to hear your light self that you send me
from India to Moravia, to befriend me.