After the Long Enduring (for Charles)
by May Sarton
After the long enduring,
The agony of staying alive
With AIDS inside you,
You who noticed everything
With wide-open eyes,
The veins in a leaf or a wrist,
Ladybird on a grass blade at rest,
They told me, “Charles is blind.”
“Blind,” is what they said.
Remember the salamander
You found in the bird bath
One summer,
A vermillion streamer?
The solitary doe at dusk
Stamping and huffing
In the luscious field?
Rilke tells you
With great tenderness,
Einblick, my friend,
Inwardness, in-sight.
published in Poetry, December 1992
Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.