After Schiller

Where was I and what then happened to me
When half-light moved beyond eclipse?
Didn't I foresee the end, and you agree
Love is the clumsiest of partnerships? 

And would you wish to hear me speak to you
Of irretrievable darkness by the sea,
Of happiness too far off to travel to
And in some narrow space a leafless tree? 

The sound of speech, the voice of sense on earth,
In this adjunct seems carpentered of years.
My richness now is nothing but a dearth
Of tricks for the wiping-away of tears. 

Moving further, may I find again
The nub of things we shared — the bridal face
Whose hurt if mine was not mine to explain
But made to seem a human commonplace. 

With looking upwards hardly in my power
And being forced to seek the stars on earth,
In this exacting planisphere I cower:
I have not moved one footstep from my birth. 

Weightless in everlasting space, but true
To the blindly heavy rules of time,
I have become a harbinger for you
Of every weighted station of your climb.