Remembering Marie A.

It was a day in that blue month September Silent beneath the plum trees' slender shade I held her there My love, so pale and silent As if she were a dream that must not fade Above us in the shining summer heaven There was a cloud my eyes dwelled long upon It was quite white and very high above us Then I looked up And found that it had gone And since that day, so many moons in silence Have swum across the sky and gone below The plum trees surely have been chopped for firewood And if you ask, how does that love seem now I must admit, I really can't remember And yet I know what you are trying to say But what her face was like, I know no longer I only know I kissed it on that day As for the kiss, I long ago forgot it But for the cloud that floated in the sky I know that still and shall forever know it It was quite white and moved in very high It may be that the plum trees still are blooming That woman's seventh child may now be there And yet that cloud had only bloomed for minutes When I looked up It vanished on the air