I.
Spaces between strings
So the lute can freely sing
Gather not too near
So two columns raise a pier
Ovid knew Khalil Gibran,
Made Baucis and Philemon.
He is oak famiglia
Never crowds her tilia.

Looking at you presently
Look at what I see
I am learning calm blue eyes
And a mind quite sweet and bright
You seem both old and new
I want to do good for you
Like you do good for me
Unter den Lindenzie.

If it isn’t me for you
Or you for me
It’s a perfectly human memory
Under the tilia tree

II.
Did you know they eat the linden leaves
when they're bright and tendering
On buttered bread with sandwich tea,
Or nibbled as a salad green 
come the flowering spring air
in Hanover there, and in Cambridge, right near here?
I hope knowing you is long,
remembering is brief.
Whatever gift is given me
I will tend the Linden leaf.

If it isn’t me for you
Or you for me
It’s a perfectly human memory
Under the tilia tree

II.b
Siegfried bathed in dragon blood
Tilia left a spot untouched
Vulnerable a single point
Unter den Linden beats the heart.

III.
Der Lindenbaum of war and peace
Where Goethe’s Werther ceased his quest
Madeleines and linden tea
Trigger your man’s memory
In store for me January
After the distinct family
Of your Russian novelist
After Pynchon’s tripping witch.

“...it’s another year,
... it’s another me,
There’s a drying tear,
Under my linden tree.”
She said, “Love never goes away,
Not if it’s really true,
It can return by night, by day,
Tender and green and new”
As the leaves from a linden tree, love,
That I left, I leave, for you

If it isn’t me for you
Or you for me
It’s a perfectly human memory
Under the tilia tree
If it isn’t me for you
Or you for me
It’s a humanly perfect memory
Under the tilia tree.