Gemini

They were both seed and stars, the twin gods.
Perched like gulls upon the mast of midnight
They kept their place above the listing earth
And led the Roman armies round the sky
And through the Forum in the days when names
Nested and sang in every monument.

In those days they were brightly dyed with time,
The gemini, like a leaf which is still green
Still crisp as an eyelash, though it fell
Dead in the blinking of a distant tree
A wind ago. They were both sap and ghost.

Even when they stiffened wholly into stars
The night still flowed under their golden ice.
They left the Forum, but their broken names
Work roundly up through the soil in each dry season.