During an Absence

I used to think that obstacles to love

     Were out of date, the darkened stairs

Leading deprived ones to the mossy tomb

Where she lay carpeted with golden hairs:

     We had no place in such a room,

Belonging to the common ground above.

In sunlight we are free to move, and hold

     Our open assignations, yet

Each love defines its proper obstacles:

Our frowning Montague and Capulet

     Are air, not individuals

And have no faces for their frowns to fold.

Even in sunlight what does freedom mean?

     Romeo’s passion rose to fire

From one thin spark within a brace of days.

We for whom time draws out, visas expire,

     Smoulder without a chance to blaze

Upon the unities of a paper scene.

The violence of a picturesque account

     Gives way to details, none the less

Reaching, each one more narrow than the last,

Down to a separate hygienic place

     Where acting love is in the past,

No golden hairs are there, no bleeding count.

No, if there were bright things to fasten on

     There’d be no likeness to the play.

But under a self-generated glare

Any bad end has possibility,

     The means endurance. I declare

I know how hard upon the ground it shone.