In this theater of the human heart
I mourn the dead,
And what was not.

I fell in love, did not trust her;
Sent her away, now doubt my judgment;
Worry about her, and know not where she is.

No poetry in that,
No meter,
Plainly spoken.

Yet—
To have sinned against love:
The ancient horror.

You laugh?
Yes, it is comedy,
And true,
So tragic,
And deadly,
This play.

But laugh carefully,
And do not forget:

Fear is a deep well without bottom,
And hell is falling without end,
And there is no salvation in an age without oracles,
But there is sin.

(Prague — August 13, 2001)

for Jarmila

A loss of temper
Misdirected, it seems,
From the one who earned its aim
To the one who earned it not,
Means recompense comes due
From the intemperate
To the inadvertent recipient,
The true scoundrel having got off clean.

Apology owed,
Sincerely given here
By the one who lost control
And let arrow fly wrongly
With consequent regret
To have shot off the mark
And wounded one so undeservedly.

Remorse, yes, to hurt one
I hold dear.
What must one do?
For one must do penance,
Must mend what has been broken
And patch it best can,
For I hold no distaste
To have been proven wrong
When so wrong I have proven to be.

Forgive me, or give sentence.

(Paris — November 1, 1994)

If she had loved me enough;
If I had loved her back;
If she had not told the truth;
If I had not listened;
If the night had been shorter;
If the day had come sooner;
Or the moon had not quartered over the western bank
Just when she began to speak,
And caught my attention, the way it hung there,
An omen, I think;

If that had not happened,
Or even if she’d held her tongue
For just one moment longer,
Enough time to work up some courage,
Some nerve, some steel,
So that I might hear the indelicate truth
Spoken so plainly—

But for want of a nail a kingdom was lost.

That was so long ago, so long ago
That I barely remember what was said.
Only the moon,
And the look that crossed her face,
And the way my heart cleaved in two, in three,
Sinking like a sad falling star
Into what might have been—
A point of illumination,
A comet tail of light,
An awakening…

That was not.

(Prague — August 9, 2001