Moving right along to the infidelity portion
of the program as if you haven't done some of that already.
The first version is "Perhaps by then,
You Will No Longer Be In Love."
"Although you have betrayed him in a dream,
you have betrayed him.
And the infidelities of sleep will change you.
You will find yourself suddenly in love
with the two young women outside your window, whose
voices and laughter fell groundward with last winter's snow.
You will begin to think, I am beginning to move among them.
But only you will be wearing a snap brimmed hat.
When the knot comes, it will knock a certain reticence.
It will leave your door covered in white knuckles
and the windows will no longer breathe.
They will die like paintings.
And you will no longer be worrying the stars
into meaning.
They will already mean something.
But that will only be the wind, only the wind
that will be keen and keening.
All else will remain hidden and nameless,
by which I mean your soul, by which
I mean you will begin by missing your old sadness,
that old country, a country fielded in rye.
And a strange sore will just then start
to form underneath your tongue.
You will always find yourself being unfaithful to someone.
You will always be gathering something from the landscape
without poems.
Then finally, winter.
To once again thin things out down
to those two women's voices.
And their laughter, their laughter falling
in the new snow.
Perhaps by then, you will no longer be in love.
Your infidelities will have changed you."