A boy I knew,
Arm gold as saddle-leather, lakeblue eyes,
Found in a foreign sky extravagant death.
Dreamy in school,
Parsed tragic Phaëthon and heard of war,
Arose surprised, gravely shook hands, and left us.
His name,
Once grey in convent writing, neat on themes,
Cut like erosion of fire the peaks of heaven.
The Arab saw
Strange flotsam fall: the baseball-sounding spring,
The summer roadster, pennoned with bright hair,
The dance at Hallowe’en,
The skater’s kiss
At midnight on the carillons of ice.
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