The poem begins with a plain declaration, "i love you," and immediately doubts it: what words can say this, and wouldn't they be forgotten soon? The speaker seems to feel that language turns strong feeling into banality, while the body, "comfortless as angels / & violent," carries something truer and harsher.
From there the poem moves into landscape: granite, a river edge, blackbirds, trees, cold forests, sand. These images seem to stand in for the feeling the speaker can't name directly. The speaker's "eye" and "tongue" stop, confused, as if overwhelmed. Then comes a hope for spring after winter, and for a "perch for singing" where "no one will part us."
The mood is tender but uneasy. Storms, terrified children and falling icefloes suggest that love lives alongside fear and loss. The closing line, "we are our own gardens / & the icefloes that fall," suggests that the couple hold both growth and destruction within themselves.