PARIS LETTER, 1944
(for Paul Eluard
in memory 1895-1952)

A shadow wall clouds overhead,
of a poet's Resistance face
on a friendly wall bed
there is no death in a tricolor
from life's red moon
waiting for one letter
by candlelight lost to a moth
in the darkness's surveillance
of a thousand portents of snow
with blood in a chance meeting
on the road's silence
from your sudden passage
in the corridor of a dim abyss
as seen from a sentry of birds
hatching in nests for the spring
Eluard, those breathless nights
by icy endless silver birches
at first light guards you
in the feverish voice and hand
from a war's metamorphosis
with long rustled suffering.