For a Russian Blond who wished before sleeping that someone might write her a poem to read when she awoke
I would pity the blind
who’ll never
dazzle in the fair fire
of your Russian hair,
except
that they may know you
by the fountain
of your leaping voice,
the graceful flight
of your excitement.
I would pity the deaf
blind to your voice,
except
that with their eyes
they have such access
to those delicately
soaring hands
you speak with
and to the tender
brilliance of
hair you sweep
from eyes
blue as the sun
to those
you look upon.
Then I would apply
my pity
to companions too distant
to see you
go about the dailiness
of living like
a flame innocent
of the light and warmth
it shares merely by being
what it is,
except
that even they
have memory
to know you by.
Finally then,
I will pity
those who know you now
only by this poem,
hopelessly aware
they must live out
their remaining lives
tantalized by the bare
possibility
of a chance encounter
with such a one,
whose very name
means
whence the honey flows,
that cataract
of sweetest light
by which,
as you sleep,
I write.
