For A Purpose Already Entombed Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Here is the other sort of blasphemy- written down
With out her eyes to look upon,
With out her limbs to drape: the incurable sort,
The decade long absence, the affair that never was anything
More than a script persuaded beneath her door she was to
Pick up and read and fall in love with, so that by the
Many implications of the sad characters, and the stage notes
For rain, and the invented thunder- the plywood lightning bolts,
And the octogenarians as Grandpa Zeus and President
Hoover, that I meant to set out to have her,
Entangle her along the ways of the roots of fruit baring
Trees, to kiss the hem of her maidenhood after climbing the
Trellis two-thousand miles, and then the swift intonations
Of a great orchestra encouraging her further,
Her hands opening up her blouse like a gift basket according
To this gray-haired conductor:
To yip and leap behind me on this horse, waving our hats to
The village, before we ride away, kissing behind the curtains
To another staged sunset, another successful night for two
Young and over eager thespians, drinks and fieldtrips around Europe:
But where has she ever been that was nearer to me, or what
I have written to her anymore than a dimming hope, that is fading
Still. Now it is here put out before the eyes of her childhood,
Just a cold bug seeming to wither into obscurity after two weeks
Of its glow-bulb evenings; and after that an ember
Licked by the carousel of waves by the empty sea,
A cremation of a flea: always turned around
And seemed to douse, a cigarette butt flicked out of a speeding car
Going the other way from Saint Augustine- Just a poem
Of a single, extended note crying for her amidst the potted cactus,
A lonely hiker amidst the mountains looking up as she flies high
Overhead, a beautiful airplane: When will she stop picking up
Superfluous tourists, the coworkers and stage-coach drivers going her
Way: I could give her a better sort of song, but she must first need to listen
To whispers to pick up this dance in an unremitting canopy far from
Society, the cool places of her dives and work; I will love her here
If she recognizes and listens, as if to a seashell,
And if not than this is written for a purpose already entombed.