Richard Wilbur

           I can’t forget 
     How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
     Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

           Nothing upon her face
  But some impersonal loneliness, — not then a girl    
        But as it were a reverie of the place,
           A called-for falling glide and whirl;

           As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it,
              Rides on over the lip —
Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.   

1957


 = Alan Reinhardt