vivid as a dream

Evening that undermined our goodbye.
Steely, enchanted, monstrous evening like a dark angel.
Evening when our lips were alive in the naked intimacy of our kisses.
Time inevitably overflowed
and swamped our useless embrace.
Together we squandered our passion, not for ourselves but for the looming solitude.
Light rejected us; night came rushing down.
We went as far as the gate in that shadowy gravity now lightened by Venus.
As one returning from a lost meadow I returned from your arms.
As one returning from a country of swords I returned from your tears.
Evening that lasts vivid as a dream
among the other evenings.
Later I was reaching and exceeding
mere nights and days.
[Jorge Luis Borges, 'A Leavetaking', in Poems of the Night]