There is in intervals of expectancy
no pit so shallow that the soul
fails to tumble in: the phlox that are no roses,
cloudlessly raining, bronze that crumbles
like stale cake, empty portraiture
before a breathed-on mirror,
your pale eyes which, said Baudelaire,
convey the tempest of a passion in a stain,
more insignificant than you or I,
because our dying is announced
in someone else's clothes,
the interval in which you are no longer
expected, a hole in which
your life once lay,
as night draws in your neighbour whistles low
‘No milk today', or for tomorrow anyway.
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