: Speak to me.    Take my hand.      What are you now?
I will tell you all.     I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair :
a pink rabbit    :        it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

: Oh, grow to know me.   I am not happy.      I will be open:
Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing. 

: Speak to me.    Take my hand.      What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid      :      and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you.     I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

: I am not happy.    I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life.     Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.

: Take my hand.    Fist my mind in your hand.    What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death 
:if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy.      I am lonely.    Speak to me.

: I will be open.   I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth: I love you.     Grow to know me.

: What are you now?   If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving . . . . Take my hand.     Speak to me.