Summer Night Piece

The garden is steeped in moonlight,Full to its high edges with brimming silver,And the fish-ponds brim and darkenAnd run in little serpent lights soon extinguished.Lily-pads lie upon the surface, beautiful as the tarnishings on frail old silver,And the Harvest moon droops heavily out of the sky,A ripe, white melon, intensely, magnificently, shining.Your window is orange in the moonlight,It glows like a lamp behind the branches of the old wistaria,It burns like a lamp before a shrine,The small, intimate, familiar shrinePlaced reverently among the bricksOf a much-loved garden wall.