There seems to be, about certain lives,
A vague, violent frame, an imperceptible
Halo of uncertainty, diffidence and taste
Worn like a private name that only God knows,
Echoing what it hides, that floats above a bottomless
Anxiety that underlies their aura of remote calm.
The intense half-dreams accumulate behind a smile;
The mind hesitates in its reflection, but remains alone.
Part of their story is an emptiness that isn’t there,
But that holds the rest in a kind of desperate embrace
Until the rest is still, and the loneliness reverberates
With the breathing of an almost human kind of peace.
But the contentment is imaginary, and the tenderness,
Like the tree in God's mind, a figment of contemplation.