ON FINDING A STRAND OF HAIR IN A BOOK

     Tell me, tell me
     what is more sad,
     more sorrowful
     than a love you would
     give your life for...

     to see it fall apart
     in your fingers.
 

     When you remember
     all you dreamed,
     and all the mountains you hoped,
     and there was nothing,
     nothing you could do

     to stop, or to save it.
     (Neither one's fault, nor the other's.)

     To realize, even at the moment,
     and the graved years you will carry it:

     nothing, nothing you could do --
     still falling apart, and one strand of hair

                    in the dark
        ... still falling, in your fingers.