ALAN SHAPIRO
Your voice more bashful the more intimate
it grew on that first night, an indrawn breath
of speech I can’t recall beyond the miserly
sweet way it hesitated on the tongue, chary of giving,
chary of taking back,
the same breath doing both at once, it seemed,
to draw me to a closer kind of speech;
yet knowing too, knowing even then
what I—more loved than loving—had the clumsy
luxury not to know, that all too soon
what words we had to say would fail us, each
lingering syllable a syllable less
between the pleasure it held off and invited,
and the bad luck pleasure would become;
a sweet syllable closer to the other nights,
the last nights, nights that would make remembering
that long first night the bitter cost of having
had what we were on the verge of having.