I recall everything, but more than all,

Words being nothing now, an ease that ever

Remembers her to my unfailing fever,

How she came forward to me, letting fall

Lamplight upon her dress till every small

Motion made visible seemed no mere endeavor

Of body to articulate its offer,

But more a grace won by the way from all

Striving in what is difficult, from all

Losses, so that she moved but to discover

A practice of the blood, as the gulls hover,

Winged with their life, above the harbor wall,

Tracing inflected silence in the tall

Air with a tilt of mastery and quiver

Against the light, as the light fell to favor

Her coming forth; this chiefly I recall.

It is a part of pride, guiding the hand

At the piano in the splash and passage

Of sacred dolphins, making numbers human

By sheer extravagance that can command

Pythagorean heavens to spell their message

Of some unlooked-for peace, out of the common;

Taking no thought at all that man and woman,

Lost in the trance of lamplight, felt the presage

Of the unbidden terror and bone hand

Of gracelessness, or the unspoken omen

That yet shall render all, by its first usage,

Speechless, inept, and totally unmanned.