LETTER POEM 3, By James Schuyler

The night is quiet

as a kettle drum

the bull frog basses

tuning up. After

swimming, after sup-

per, a Tarzan movie,

dishes, a smoke. One

planet and I

wish. No need

of words. Just

you, or rather,

us. The stars tonight

in pale dark space

are clover flowers

in a lawn the expanding

Universe in which

we love it is

our home. So many

galaxies and you my

bright particular,

my star, my sun, my

other self, my bet-

ter half, my one

From “James Schuyler Collected Poems” (Farrar Straus Giroux: $35; 450 pp.). 1993 by the estate of James Schuyler. Reprinted by permission .