House And Headstone Poem by Robert Rorabeck

House And Headstone

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I’ve called you by the last line of a poem,
As often as by the first,
And you answered insouciantly the way an obese
Detective decides to solve murders only when
He is not enjoying a spotless dinner,
And I have wounded myself by a weapon described
To myself as love, and by your name which
Has its own sharpness of metal and deadness of echo,
But all of that is enough,
For even now when I am getting drunk,
I am sure I am wounded, and scarred higher up,
And walking around shivering for I am the last of a species,
But have come to realize that I will be made no more
Precious nor immortal by your touch, or by lying beside
You bare-chested, with your breasts pressed through
The shadows, and your eyes like ruby pinpricks up
Against my own- For I have seen you in your
Photographs with other men, and you are a beautiful woman,
But now nothing more, and this invisible flaw lays like
A drowned goddess immobile in her amnesiac lake,
Her lips pressed in statuesque laughter to the hemlock of
A bearded philosopher, he too drunk to death and holding
His guitar tighter than he would hold you;
And my dogs love me, and the night of my world is too
Miraculous and transitory to cause me to hold my breath for
Anything but; And this world is a projective moving high
Above a nourishless field from the womb of its cannon,
As we are all twirling away from each other even as we move
In to kiss, and I do not know you, or why your eyes filled
Me up and gave cause for the heartbeat of my sport,
But you cannot blame me now that I am independent and rich,
Even if you should not remember my name, you should not
Say it out loud to anyone, for soon I will have both a house
And a headstone, so even if you should move in close to
Visit, I could only greet you at the threshold to tell you
It is not necessary.

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Robert Rorabeck

Robert Rorabeck

Berrien Springs
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