Archibald MacLeish (7 May 1892 – 20 April 1982 / Glencoe, Illinois)

THE gull's image and the gull
Meet upon the water
All day I have thought of her
There is nothing left of that year
(There is sere-grass
Salt colored)
We have annulled it with
Salt
We have galled it clean to the clay with that one autumn
The hedge-rows keep the rubbish and the leaves
There is nothing left of that year in our lives but the leaves of it
As though it had not been at all
As though the love the love and the life altered
Even ourselves are as strangers in these thoughts
Why should I weep for this?
What have I brought her?
Of sorrow of sorrow of sorrow her heart full
The gull
Meets with his image on the winter water.