The poet first remembers attending the wedding of a passionate woman with whom he’d once had a passionate affair. Out of fear and conventionality, she’s marrying a dull steady man. The poet’s contribution to the event is the buying and strewing of a thousand red and white roses — a parting gesture of ardor for a woman consigning herself to passionlessness.
Now, much older, the poet considers his own younger life.
There is no feast but energy. All men
know — have known and will remember
again and again — what food that is
for the running young wolf of the rare days
when shapes fall from the air
and may be had for the leaping.
Clean in the mouth of joy. Flat and dusty.
And how they are instantly nothing —
a commotion in the air and in the blood.
— And how they are endlessly all.
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The thanksgiving feast honors the gift of spiritedness — sheer visceral delight in the world, an adequacy to the world’s challenge to us to be full of life, as the world is full of life. Vibrancy comes at us and we, especially when young, leap up to it, tear at it for sustenance. Yet these passionate fulfillments “are instantly nothing – / A commotion in the air and in the blood.” They come and go, overwhelming us and vanishing; and as we age the possibility of vibrancy lessens.
Still, if they are in the instant nothing, they are also “endlessly all.” We hoard these moments, drawing from our store of them a sort of second-level vibrancy that also sustains us.
… I remember the feasts of my life,
their every flowing. I remember
the wolf all men remember in his blood.
I remember the air become
a feast of flowers.
The poet gives thanks, then, for the leap, and for the after-leap; for the enlivening memory of the original flowering.
… It is the words starve us, the act that feeds.
The air trembling with the white wicks
of its falling encloses us. To be
perfect, I suppose, we must be brief.
The long thing is to remember
imperfectly, dirtying with gratitude
the grave of abundance. O flower-banked,
air-dazzling, and abundant woman,
though the young wolf is dead, all men
know — have known and must remember —
You.
The poet begins with typical ambivalence about his vocation: Words are a kind of enervation; what you want is the leaping. Act now, live all you can, because the flame of life will be drawn out of us as fire is drawn up and out of a candle. To be sure, any life’s perfect moments of bliss will be brief; but the way to play out the rest of your existence is with fidelity to those moments, always remembering and always being grateful for them. The grave of abundance is polished, quiet, sealed; to it you must bring your grateful “dirtying” – your messy, foggily recalled, erotically insistent, earthily alive tribute to the vibrancy that was.