Through the sea's crust of prisms looking up
Into the run of light above the swellm,
And down a fathom, down a fathom more
Into the darkness closing like a shell.
Oblique, like fall of leaves down the wet glide
Of season and surrender from the tree
Of life across the windows of a wind
To the final ruined lawn beneath a sea—
Glide, glide and fall. How lightly death goes down
Into the crushing fog, pale and refracted.
Seen dimly and then lost, like jellyfish
Flowering a tide, expanded, then contracted,
Once more expanded, and then closed forever
To make a stain on stone and liquefy
The memory that kissed a mountain girl
And ran on grass as if it could not die.
(1955)