Lament Psalm

What strange afters now, after everything; once when our bright laughter struck out, heavencrazed and returned to us redoubled, we would draw like lightning those looks from each other; every bright word between our smiling lips gossamer and fire-tinged lances whose heat only warmed.   

Graceful joy, you would run like lines of flight between ocean breakers and under the leaf-life of the trees, through the neighborhood houses as if to tell them they could not hold you there.  And I found you wonderful, I would admire your beauty, your smell, and you would laugh little melodies at the jokes I told.  Truly being here was glorious, and even you knew it.  You who would call me for comfort in the pearl-sable night, and I would come.  You who ask now for the hardest gift, which I cannot give with any joy.  In these afters, now only some distant varieties of quiet, a hollow songbird singing nothing.  

God gave me a gift for my heart’s wildness, for a little time; but like the mana I tried to keep it to myself, and it is ruined, ruined.