What if death
Were not the death of you—
But the death of the world?
Your soul, unspeakably alone,
Living on, alone, alone?
In the old times, those times
Known only by ancient rhymes,
Poets—known faintly by their traces,
Feeble markings in the sand,
Ravaged by sea or jealous wind,
Howling intimately across the ruined land—
Intimated in letters lovely faces
Of goddesses who could not write,
Their glowing bodies poems in the intimate night,
True poets, they!
But old times have flown away.
Poets who are not poets do not exist today,
Except this one who is in my bed,
Her feet, her breasts, her handsome head.
