i
they are all bloom: music, spume, cumulus!
all froth and faith and folderol and fancy dress;
they are frail and flame, frivolous and luminous,
ephemeral, extravagant, exquisite, effortless
they are the small laughter, the caught breath,
the curl of your hair, the curve of your breast:
glory and garden, fierce and fragile as belief --
they are joy incarnate, lover. and they are grief.
ii
more than perfect, unbearable, the tree:
the wing of it now, the grace, the light, the lift
glamours the ground. and this glad gallantry
demands of me the last and least possible gift:
to call its fallen wealth not diminution,
to honour each petal of its dissolution
-- GPL 1998 D. A. Clarke