This is a poem about friendship.
And it's called, "The Best Halves of Our Lives."
It was written in a peculiar way and probably a bit dishonest
in that sense, but every poet probably has this circumstance.
I was-- my wife and I were in Yugoslavia for a while,
a couple of years ago, and I was trying
to write a poem about friendship and wasn't having much luck.
I mean, the whole thing was about the abstraction
of friendship.
And after I'd finished one version of the poem,
I was looking through my drawer and found an old poem that was
wasn't very successful.
And it was simply a poem about a landscape,
about standing by the side of a lake
and seeing yourself mirrored in the lake, whatever.
I just yoked the two poems together in such a way
that they fortunately turned out to be one poem.
"The Best Halves of Our Lives."
"The dark lake's emptiness spreads to its receding shores,
the last red flag of day breaks down.
And I look back and dream, patient for miracles.
I am glad to be alone, to evoke your images
around a table playing cards, old friends with little to say.
At our feet, the dogs sleep fitfully.
Our wives who keep us together and apart,
rise to remind us of our daily lives.
I stand by the water watching clouds,
for whole days remembering nothing at all.
Here at the edges, less matters.
I measure life by seasons away from friends,
imagining each in his storybook house writing letters which
ascend, and hexagons, and circles,
to settle miles away on my roof.
And the angel in the lake, imperfect friend,
finds me in this other place grim with maturity
and distance, watching a kingfisher and the swallow dip
in a last evening flight, and meet their shadows
rising in the water."