8
O you few, playmates of a former childhood
in the scattered gardens of the city:
how we found each other and slowly grew close
and, like the lamb with the talking scroll,
spoke with our silence. When together we felt happiness,
it belonged to none of us. Whose was it?
And how it seeped away amid the rushing people,
and in the worries of the long year.
Carriages rolled past us, strange and transient,
houses stood around us, strong but false, —and none of it
ever acknowledged us. What in all that was real?
Nothing. Only the balls. Their glorious arcs.
Not even the children … But sometimes one stepped—
oh one vanishing—under the plummeting orb.