How strange this life is mine, and not another,
This jigsaw . . . each irrevocable piece.
That bad, unfinished business of my brother,
Dead at nineteen; my gadding years in Greece
And Italy; life lived, not understood;
A sunset in Kerala, when it seemed
The sun had risen on my life for good.
All this was real, but seems now as if dreamed.
The presences I’ve loved, and poetry—
Faces I cannot parse or paraphrase
Whose mystery is all that they reveal;
The Persian poets who laid hands on me
And whispered that all poetry is praise:
These are the dreams that turned out to be real.
from The Hudson Review