I did not offer any solutions for
injustices I had identified in human life because I knew that
Ideal is not real.

I have written
and now I long for sleep
let me be forgotten
there's nothing to keep

for with time every memory slips
and no word needs to be spoken
silence should seal the lips
my most cherished dreams would have been stolen--

I have written
some feelings have run deep
there has been little consolation
joys have been hard to reap

for life is never golden
troubles they but gather in a heap
as the dusk hours blacken
I'll happily embrace my awaited sleep

Whilom seafarers in rapture,
seven minutes in heaven,
then nothing but bathos,
--a woman in bed,
she and Rembrandt quarreling
over fidelity or obedience to her king?

"It is I, Seagull!"

"Everything is fine. I see the horizon..."

Night sky, a blow torch,
a golden rain flowing between her legs,
curled in the veil of imperial lineage and/or arousal,
--ballistic arc,
peering into the hand mirror,
a breach of promise staring back.

"Will the flight
affect your reproductive organs, Danaë?"

"Conceivably...
and how they shall weep
when things go wrong between us?"

Her constellations move differently

She no longer controls star systems

Only one remaining cluster
now orbits her

But it is more than enough

For they need and love her as their light-giving empyrean