From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine II

And yet the fountain spends itself, and it is

in the clear

light of its losing that we seem

to take delight:

you dipped your hand in its running braid

to sprinkle my forehead, my lips.

Garden deities observed us: three nymphs

with moss staining their haunches, a pug-nosed faun.

The wound in water closed

perfectly around your gesture, erasing it,

so that only the glimmer, swiftly

drying, on my face recalled

our interruption

of the faultless, cold, passionate, perpetual

idea of the stream’s descent—

which, unlike ours, would always be renewed.