Yes. I have seen the end, and yes,
I was disturbed by what I saw.
That I yet glimpse occasional

He found old age awaiting him 
                on a spare and limpid plain
         between Troy’s embers and the mines’

the cool painterly quality the eye
attains during its mute pause at the pier.

Words as these, repeated since childhood, repeated
into transparency—how do we dare attend

He barely looked, so used he had become
to how little pleasure Time could bring,

The way had become unbearably slow, progress
imperceptible. Even his hunger had become
less, little more than a poorly remembered myth

In paling sixth-hour light the woman cups
one azure tile fragment as if asking
of its brokenness a sign. The bright

That’s what I like best about you, Erato sighed in bed, that’s why
you’ve become one of my favorites and why you will always be so.
I grazed her ear with my tongue, held the salty lobe between my lips.

All loves are bodily, require
that the lips part, and press their trace
of secrecy upon the one

Distance? Well, yes, a sort of distance, or a mute
remove from the genuine distress he witnessed

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze
of these skeletal figures affects
the disposition of those grinning candies

Does one ever sink into a vision?

I was astonished to observe I was still standing.

In that cove, water from the font leaps up, its foam
drawing light from some obscurity beyond the trees,