A moment now! Across the tiny table
You watch me with no danger in your eyes;
Yet I, securely chained but quite unstable,
Feel in my pulse the throb of victories.
And hands must touch across the snow-white cover,
And silver dishes mirror back the years;
And through the chatter lover calls to lover,
And with the falling twilight falling tears.
What though our fingers dabble in the minute
And my unquiet eyes shame quietness,
Your slender voice will reach me like a spinet
From some far room, and halt this sudden stress.
Somewhere behind your dark eyes’ warning magic
The vague potential years are caught and stilled;
And so, with laughter comically tragic,
We wreck the prison that we tried to build.