Elegy For A Mis-spent Youth

Now that the chestnut candles burn
for your birthday, thickening the air
with vapoured sap, my thoughts return
to the attic over the square,
the table with its open book
and a bottle in which the red
sun set, your dress over the back
of a chair, and the bed
where, nightly, drowsy with the fair
exchange of love and with the smell
of chestnut wicks lighting the square,
we never lay and never shall.