The sun was warm, but the wind was chill
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.
(sounds of water)

Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again.
Let me not wander in a barren dream
that nothing cures. An immense slackening ache,
in the unfinished sky with nothing to hold it,
lowly one day, no different from the others.

Well, I would like to make
all memory resolve itself in gaze.

The trees say, Pull me: but the hand you stretch,
the afternoon sifted coolness,
is deep with song.

Poets, in order: Robert Frost, Carol Ann Duffy, Basho, Seamus Heaney, John Keats, Philip Larkin, Richard Siken, Wang Wei, Denise Levertov, Richard Hugo, George Herbert, Louise Bogan, Langston Hughes.

And the title: Eagles, “Hotel California”