Moonsongs

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
     I sang
O reckless free-hearted
          free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them
   And is kind to me.

Sand of the sea runs red
Where the sunset reaches and quivers.
Sand of the sea runs yellow
Where the moon slants and wavers.

Your whitelight flashes the frost to-night
Moon of the purple and silent west.
Remember me one of your lovers of dreams.

What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon,
Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted,
What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on,
Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for — what, Bill?

A swirl in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.

Listen a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a
silver dress, lost in a circus rider's silver dress.

Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman,
circled with birches and pines mixing their green and white among stars
shattered in spray clear nights.	
  
I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots under my heart the
same as a lonely woman, a lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus
rider's silver dress.

Leaves of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west.
Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures.
The moon’s good-by ends pictures.
The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk at all now.
Only dark listening to dark.