268 and 269

Because you aren’t in my neighborhood,

because you aren’t somewhere in the town,

because you aren’t in the nearby wood,

or anywhere I might as well track down,

or in this country or the ones next door,

and not across the continents abroad,

not even in the seas or skies you soar,

nor anywhere that can, by man, be trod,

I look to stars to see if you are there,

but find no evidence by stellar sea;

and since I cannot find you anywhere,

I must assume ‘tis fate hides you from me.

So I will whisper to the galaxy:

“In this life or the next, I will find thee.”

~~~

Tho time intend to daunt thy flowered face,

mine eye shall see but what thou art to me.

Be‘t years, or space, or weather, or disgrace,

thy now is what shall always, always be.

Thy now—for it is growing all the time,

for now we are not stagnant anyway.

Eternal and ongoing as a rhyme,

thy now is precious now, and every day.

This word I sow for entropy to know

that all its powers have no hold on thee.

Tho all the universe shall she outgrow,

she shall not sunder thy sweet memory.

This, lone of all of me, shall ever be:

my exultation at the thought of thee.