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She allows me to kiss her twice, as though to say,
'Yes my entire goodwill is yours, my friend.
We understand each other:or at least,
We strive to make our mutual mystery end.'
But nothing else ends that mystery. My thoughts
Go back to when- comparative strangers-we
Discussed a dozen earnest trifles, yet
endowed them with a strange intensity;
And how weeks later, once, I saw you come
Into a room, dressed for some grand affair
In silk, and for ten minutes could admire
The straight division in your well-brushed hair,
And feel,'she's lovely, very lovely.Men
Have turned less loviness than this to rhyme.'
Yet, never, in the craziest flight of hope,
Imagined, then, that there could come a time
When we would kiss as friends. But now I see
Kisses, or even love itself, must be
Almost, and to the very end, mere balm
Given to assuage that mutual mystery.
Children stand on tiptoe
at a fence of wood,
And all they glimpse seems as by magic made:
So, in the lovely tumult of our days,
the heart stands tiptoe at its palisade.
Monk Gibbon
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