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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain

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         THIRTEEN LINES

     FROM THE CYCLE POEMS OF MIDNIGHT

You  spoke at last...
                  No wooer on bended knees
Those words, those fateful words would thus have spoken -
You said them like a captive who has broken
His chains, and fled, and through the blur of tears
A sacred grove of silver birches sees.
The silence sang and hummed; the sun's pure blaze
Cut shrough the shadows and the darkness banished;
The wine's flat taste had changed; the present vanished;
A world transformed by magic met your gaze.
And I who was to be a murderess,
I, cruelly doomed that fragile dream to shatter,
Sought to prolong it and refused to utter
The brutal words that would destroy such bliss.

1963