A Summer Evening Lives Into The Night
Around 1965, I watched an old movie version of Cyrano de Bergerac, and the final scene of the movie was so moving, that I immediately sat down and wrote the following poem, as quickly as I could write:
"A Summer Evening Lives Into the Night"
The subtle shades of laurel leaves abides
The red of roses laughing at their side
The brambles' acridness
The petals' sweetness
The scent of grass fresh crushed
In gentle drifting through the visions
Drifting through the languid rush
Of moons and clouds in shadowy collisions
A star through velvet shifting
The hush of breathing lifting to the night.
The lightness of your lips,
The caustic after-image of their touch,
The laughter of my fingertips
Dancing down your face.
Memories in dreams go dancing
Clutching hand in hand it seems
The blush of cheeks seren enhancing
Red remembering of green.
So roses wilt and fall from too much laughing.
The green of laurel leaves outlives them all,
The summer's flame,
The frost of early fall,
The winter's call begetting
The blame in each sun setting,
The gaping Spring raped green
By passion's budding breath,
The falling-fashioned, hushed serene
Of age,
Of death.
============
A google.com search reveals that the movie I saw was made in 1950, staring Jose Ferrar.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042367/