Heavy in a stinging loss, left subtracted
by this modern burned letter
Message better left unturned
Your crooked voice un-gilt
by the flourish of a pretty fountain

The harvest died this year
Drought aside a man marked
madly laughing in blows
on this striped and tragic land
where summer’s ash brims furrows

The better of us quick to carry on
The worse a well boxed-up in the dust
Before the seasons start their spin
And winter its bared and bloodied teeth:
storms, the sinking sun, the sadness

Trips to the world are stopped and cut
by ghosts of you standing still on the road
and the bodies of your numberless lovers,
tongues drumming his maddened skull
even without your lying-down head

Our walls will hold you yet a while
as holes in this house-once-home
smile widely at me finding
Your books, boxed, rotting
in the corners of our shrinking rooms