These nights-they are all the same.
I cannot forbear now. I write you these lines.
The summer has grown too old.
Too many hundreds of nights we have lived apart
Farther from each other in the same country
Than stars from Rome.
A difficult journey overland winter or summer
Many times delayed.
The sorrow this time is to us.
Your gifts do not any longer console me,
Not knife or lamp or jar, though I touch them. Silent.
Maybe the goblet you and I passed between us
When we drank the black wine.
The wine glints as I pour it under starlight.
I drink from the full glass
And find, staring from the base of the bowl
Where the stem is bonded
A blue eye.
Starry night.
When for the darkness you can't read these words any longer,
Fold my letter into your coat.
Do not be afraid
To drink in the wastes of the northern provinces
As I do here
A wine so black it brings down the stars.