When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. Ray Bradbury

to flesh,

      Instead of lonely flesh, for lack of company,

      Alone with mind.

      But, then, imagine, what does happen when some ghost

      Of quiet passes and in passing nudges silence?

      Does his silence know her vibrant quiet there

      All drifting on the walk with leaves and dust?

      It must. Or so the old religions say.

      Thus forests know themselves and know the fall

      Of their own timbers dropping in the unseen,

      And so non-existent, wood;

      Such things should hear themselves

      And feel, record, and ridge them in their souls—

      And yet … ?

      I really wonder if some night by chance

      Old Herman and that lost and somehow always old dear Emily

      Out late and walked five hundred miles in dreams

      Might not have made some lone collision

      At a crossroads where the moon was lamp

      And trees were winter sentry to their soft encounter there.

      One pale gaze finds the other,

      One blind hand stutters forth to reach and touch the air,

      His wry hand comes the other way,

      So frail the night wind trembles it,

      Both shake as candles shake their fires

      When old time turns ashuttle in its sleep.

      The houses keep their shutters down.

      The moon expires. The sidewalk ghosts remain

      And, touching palms, at last walk almost but not quite

      Arm in arm, soul hungering soul, away, away

      Toward loss of midnight, toward gain of fog and mist

      And day.

      So walk they round the buried town all night.

      Seeing their spectral shadows in the cold shop window glass,

      Bleak mariner and odd mothball closet attic maiden lass.

      No word they speak, nor whisper, nor does breath

      Escape their nostrils, but they share

      A strange new sense of being, everywhere they wander, go.

      No thought, no word is said of dining,

      Yet in the middle of a midnight pond of grass they do

      Toss down their souls

      And bring some wild thing up that writhes and gasps

      And dances in their arms and is all shining.

      Then on through night the love-drunk strangers browse

      And in conniption clovers do their fevers douse.

      Thus round the courthouse square