WAITING
By John Malcolm Brinnin
What reasons may the single heart employ
When, forward and impervious, it moves
Through savage times and science toward the joy
Of love’s next meeting in a threatened space?
What privilege is this, whose tenure gives
One anesthetic hour of release,
While the air raid’s spattered signature displays
A bitter artistry among the trees?
Thus, in our published era, sweetness lives
And keeps its reasons in a private room;
As, in the hothouse, white hibiscus proves
A gardener’s thesis all the winter through,
So does this tenderness if waiting bloom
Like tropics under glass, my dear, for you.
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