Her memory fills the air so clear that I thought 
that the shadow of a bird was falling on my head.
The tulip tree in a park is of a dark and raw green.
A nameless benevolence fills the sky, from the tops
of the smoky gables on the farthest horizon.
In the room where she came, in the room 
where there were lilacs as dark as night,
there are now roses in a glass
and a magnolia bud that my mother 
set on the hollow, varnished piano.
That flower has not yet opened,
but it has swelled as if to explode,
and is rising out of the vase, so that it seems
it is going to take flight in midsummer.
I close my window, the better to trap the shadow.
I daydream. I have suffered. I know nothing more. I daydream.
The pump creaks and my dog sleeps on the parquet.
So when will the day come when, pushing the latch 
of the front door dreaming beneath the cedar,
her hand will make the worn flagstones glitter 
with all the light that her presence brings?