I did not realize soon enough that I wanted to be someone else, not somewhere else.

I thought I could not bear people (I am not enough for people),

but after all the beauty I have seen...

All the hallowed halls,

all the remnants left
by those now centuries gone--

they are not worth a single living thing.

A harp without a harpist
is just a confusion of strings.

And there is no grandeur we can create
that will ever take our place.

I am saying it could all be ashes
if you leave.

I gave her thornless roses,
thinking there is space still for something
between those ageless hands.

Very nice, sir.
Never dear, never darling, never precious—
Such old words, she says.
She means: like lungs and gasoline,
we just don’t need them anymore.

But I get my smile.
Always do.
Measured, weighed, tested, and yet:
Brief eclipse, splash of night.

The model was a fresh Rita Hayworth, 1939.

Yes, very nice. Only, tell me, sir…
Do you remember?
When the world was cruel?

Later, when there is time,
I swear to start again.
I have had dreams of honeyed girls
and an end to fearing silence.

What is it
that you want from me?

Oh,
wild things.

Here is what I want to tell people about the ghastly
the grim the macabre the morbid
the grinning skulls we draw on pages
at desks far from fields of skulls set rigid:

You cannot negotiate with silence.
You can only
look at it

however
you like.

There is no sanctity dead or living.
Though, for all of us, I would wish it so
(we never cease in making monuments to swear it is so)
(look at these monuments--
and see it is not).

A natural law requires no belief.

You don’t listen.
I said:
Let go.