this is everything and endgame

I
I enter the deep blue hour—
here is the landing, the chain shuts behind
and now in the room only carmine on a mouth
and a bowl of late roses—you!

We both know, those words
that we both spoke and often offered others
are of no account and out of place between us:
this is everything and endgame.

Silence has advanced so far
it fills the room and seals it shut
the hour—nothing hoped and nothing suffered—
with its bowl of late roses—you.

II
Your face blurs, is white and fragile,
meanwhile there collects on your mouth
all of desire, the purple and the blossoms
from some ancestral flotsam stock.

You are so pale, I think you might disintegrate
in a snowdrift, in unblooming
deathly white roses, one by one—coral
only on your lips, heavy and like a wound.

You are so soft, you portend something
of happiness, of submersion and danger
in a blue, a deep blue hour
and when it's gone, no one knows if it was.

III
I remind you, you are another's,
what are you doing bearing me these late roses?
You say dreams bleach, hours wander,
what is all this: he and I and you?

"What arises and arouses, it all comes to an end,
what happens--who exactly knows,
the chain falls shut, we are silent in these walls,
and outside is all of space, lofty and dark blue."

[Michael Hofmann {1957- }, 'Blue Hour', from Twentieth-Century German Poetry]