If you could come on the late train for <br />The same walk <br />Or a hushed talk by the fireplace <br />When the ash flares <br />As a heart could (if a heart would) to <br />Recall you, <br />To recall allin a long <br />Look, to enwrap you <br />As it once had when the rain streamed on the <br />Fall air, <br />And we knew, then, it was all wrong <br />It was love lost <br />And a year lost of the few years we <br />Account most &mdash <br />But the bough blew and cloud <br />Blew and the sky fell <br />From its rose ledge on the wood's rim to <br />The wan brook, <br />And the clock read to the half-dead <br />A profound page <br />As the cloud broke and the moon spoke and the <br />Door shook &mdash <br /> <br />If you could come, and it meant come at the <br />Steep price <br />We regret yet as the debt swells <br />In the nighttime <br />And the could come if you could hum in <br />The skull's drum <br />And the limbs writhe till the bed <br />Cries like a hurt thing &mdash <br />If you could &mdash ah but the moon's dead and the <br />Clock's dead. <br />For we know now: we can give all <br />But it won't do, <br />Not the day's length nor the black strength nor <br />The blood's flush. <br /> <br />What we took once for a sure thing, <br />For delight's right, <br />For the clear eve with its wild star in <br />The sunset, <br />We would have back at the old <br />Cost, at the old grief <br />And we beg love for the same pain &mdash for a <br />Last chance! <br />Then the god turns with a low <br />Laugh (as the leaves hush) <br />But the eyes ice and there's no twice: the <br />Benign gaze <br />Upon some woe but on ours no, <br />And the leaves rush.<br /><br />John Frederick Nims<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-young-ionia/
