The pain began in the left groin at high tea
in The Cincinnatian Hotel; Mother refused
to consider the possibilities of hernia

Morgan retreats. He retreats into Schubert,
into his journal, into his imagination, his silence.
Away from the personalities, the out-of-order,

The only heir, memory cannot bless any new deed
With the marks of management, transported

Morgan slipped into the Aegean at Monemvasia
for the algae-covered rocks tried to keep him
out. He would be the first in. Mother asked:

Walking could hardly concern him.
At his house, though, this topic would be
spoken of as though it were political.

Roadside grasses are seen
to vary, stem and thistledown:
pale straw or light brown,

If you’d seen
        lightning nets in clear water, 
midnight blue beyond the reefs;

Barrel bombs. Chlorine gas. Tomahawks.
The crowd balks
at the little lute sleeping through the news.

We make pilgrimages, we pay tribute,
as its backward-glancing heroine
is a painter’s tribute to a poet’s stanzas.

We were between armor and mummies 
                on the ground floor,
weighing preservation in a tin