The poem
There is a meadow in Sweden where I lie smitten, eyes stained with clouds' white ins and outs.
And about that meadow roams my widow plaiting a clover wreath for her lover.
I took her in marriage in a granite parish. The snow lent her whiteness, a pine was a witness.
She'd swim in the oval lake whose opal mirror, framed by bracken, felt happy, broken.
And at night the stubborn sun of her auburn hair shone from my pillow at post and pillar.
Now in the distance I hear her descant. She sings "Blue Swallow," but I can't follow.
The evening shadow robs the meadow of width and color. It's getting colder.
As I lie dying here, I'm eyeing stars. Here's Venus; no one between us.