Happiness is that fading mortal light,

Before the closing eyelid edge of earth

Wipes sunset’s liquid fire-glow blank with night;

A golden hour of hazy, rose-pink blurs.

It rises through the tangled ivy sounds

of cloudy, crowded conversation’s maze,

as shifting, shapeless half-words, sense unfound;

Emerging marbled meanings slyly sway.

It drifts on fleeting, lucid-dreaming wings,

in floating, hair-thin, fragile focus planes,

A sand cascade of disappearing things

As bone-white reaching fingers stretch in vain.

It is remembered taste and shadows chased,

An almost, nearly, not quite, falling into place.