Living For Two - Denise Levertov
Lily Bloom, what ominous fallen crowfeathers of shadow the nightlight scattered around your outspread hair on feverish cumulus of pillows— demonic darkness, hair, feathers, jabs of greenish sickroom light. And your sallow face, long, lost, lonely, O Lily Bloom, dying, looked into mine those nights, searching, equine, for life to be lived— but not believing, Believing yourself fit for the knacker's yard... What I told you—promised you— though I meant it, didn't make sense: Friendship, Life of Art, Love of Nature. You had no correlatives, I had no holiness. You saved me the exact shame of not coming across. But Lily— whom I remember not in my head (or barely once a year) but in my nerves—what brimm...