Too dark, the image is spontaneous surprise

Allowing for callow simplicity, widespread, not

Freely strung, perhaps, nor finely wrought.

Spoken, an oblique word to add to some collection, surmised

And measured plans without a thought to instruments of light,

Nor proper canvas housing hues and filigreed beams

To grace medieval drawings and ever-flowing dreams

In cold rejection foiled, splays to mask the monumental heights

Routine in use no matter how magnificent: you preferred hopes

To need, to full-grown trees but tiny seeds,

Or wholes that must in time disintegrate; a flute, perhaps a reed

In need of being played, the player all too often wrapped in robes

Of musk-dyed silks and ancient tides,

And all the while I merely smiled and let it die.