For An Exchange of Rings

FOR AN EXCHANGE OF RINGS / Donald Hall They rise into mind, the young lovers of eighteen-nineteen: As they walk together in a walled garden of Hampstead, tremulous, their breathing quick, color high, eyes lucent, he places the floral ring with its almondine stone on her finger. Although in two winters, hopeless in Rome, her letters unopened beside him, he will sweat, cough, and die; although forty years later a small old woman will wear his ring and locket of hair as she stops breathing—now, in Hampstead, in eighteennineteen , they are wholly indifferent to other days as they moisten and swell. The Missouri Review · 43 ...