Fruitlessly I fall once more in love with the barren tree.

Her cold arms grip the sun in a perpetual autumn

      of age-worn friends, of sad reminiscence, of the worn art

that hauls its wares like a patient down the street,
    
      of age and the pain of rediscovering old pain

in a sunless world, there in the garden in the damp.

      Where her shadow lingers lies my heart’s presentiment;

I have dug among hook-grass and wilding bulbs,

      hoping for warmth that might be intrinsic to the loam;

but the dew comes quickly, dark falls off the stars

      like the leaves that slipped from her unrelenting limbs.

The awareness grows that I am nothing to her;

  I retread the mashed grass that my first forays made,
        
and wish only to hide in the ignorance of sleep.