He went to bed early, and dreamed well.
Wild sex, many secret meetings.
Toward dawn, he woke as usual.
That is, he felt somehow guilty
for the pleasures, the dark secrets.
He noticed the leaves, and took heart.
They, too, had had a wild night.
They were yellow and shriveled, barely
hanging on. As if they also had loved furiously,
secretly, and now were in a state
of shock. It was a new day, and all
over his country men and women were making coffee,
putting on the shirts and pants behind which our bodies
lie still all day, sleeping like owls, worn out
from the night’s long chase, its bloody victories
and secret, unremarked defeats.