Two of everything was the rule Noah made.

Couple them into my only Ark, he said,

So to perpetuate the giraffe's true blood.

The dog, the boar, the donkey are not lost.

I'll wash generations up on the other coast,

Horse, heron, and housefly saved from the past.

It is the Flood again. Drudging in the dark,

Noah again, this time with my own hands' work,

I have keeled and ribbed and decked an ark.

Keep. Keep. What shall I keep from the water

Of time by naming one that two make better?

Time floods. There will be no late or later.

Two of everything. Come in from an August field

Double the day we kissed and drowned in gold.

Run to my ship, brother and image of my child.

Poetry, the poem being written, this and yours,

Be paired, the words coming and the cares

Of making, a difficult delight, and ours.

Find two years like the last for backward study.

Bring two clocks, of the heart, of the body.

They race me ahead of myself to get me ready.

There were two rooms and two faces at your look

Last in the deep glass in your trouble. Take

A silvery great mirror to the cabin on my deck.

Echo. Sound in the timbered caverns of the ship

Bach again as I heard it choired in the bare shape

Of a high rehearsal-hall once, a music to keep.

Come walking toward me forever from the sun,

Your shadow before you free and flowing on,

And stand in the doorway-light so, and come in.

Time rises by shipside now, we lift in flood

And float free. I have everything in heart's load

For the voyage, and in sky right weather ahead.