Richly, some room holds you --
although the room itself is squalid,
lessened by seedy transients,
permitted no beauty, until now,
holding you, it shelters a world.
Even its dark dinginess is altered,
drawn out of its barren existence,
warmed inward to where you lie --
asleep? Restless and brooding? Remembering?
Regretting other places, fusions of love?
Down the bare, uncarpeted corridors
many feet move heavily, lurching, stumbling,
carrying other men to rooms as faceless,
characterless, uncaring, unbeautiful.
Only the single room shutting the wind away from you,
none other, is rich beyond riches tonight.
Not so, this clean-walled, soft-lamped room of mine --
Everywhere my memory turns,
longing assails it and I am a prisoner,
lost in the one-time eden from which you removed your richness.
p. 42
