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Twilight Moon: Assisi from a private collection

POSTLUDE

life is more true than reason will deceive

(more secret or than madness did reveal)

deeper is life than lose:higher than have

—but beauty is more each than living’s all

multiplied with infinity sans if

the mightiest meditations of mankind

cancelled are by one merely opening leaf

(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

or does some littler bird than eyes can learn

look up to silence and completely sing?

futures are obsolete;pasts are unborn

(here less than nothing’s more than everything)

death,as men call him,ends what they call men

—but beauty is more now than dying’s when