Omens by Louise Glück

I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.

I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.

To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely
making, in silence, omen of mere event
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.

			-after Alexander Pushkin

~ from Averno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)