Death invited to break its horns
on the spread
cloth. To drop its head

This morning, flakes of sun
peel down to the last snowholds,
the barbed-wire leavings of a war

Once in the middle of a boy’s walk
Where I came seeking facts to wonder at,
I found a relic left from a small life,

I lift my cone to hers
As if drinking a toast.
Her pink tongue, like a cat’s,

Unknown faces in the street
and winter coming on. I
stand in the last moments of

Your beauty, which I lost sight of once
for a long time, is long,
not symmetrical, and wears

Ruins are what we make of them, and wrecked 
Imaginations could want to do so little 
With any real rubble. Acres of crumbled bricks,

“It was your fault! It was your fault!” cried the Peacock.
“And it was yours too,” whispered the Snake.

“It was lust! It was lust!” shouted the Peacock.

If we are truly free and live in a free country,
When shall I be without this heaviness of mind?
When shall I have peace? Peace this way and peace that way?

All is despoiled, abandoned, sold;
Death’s wing has swept the sky of color;
All’s eaten by a hungry dolor.