Please Give These Flowers To Madame Henrietta Poem by Artchil Daug

Please give these flowers to Madame Henrietta,
just before the ravens signal the arrival of Nephthys
that she may see me in the land of her dreams
and remember the first time I cast my feelings
on her enigmatic pose near the old statue of Liberty,
or the way she stared at my eyes by that river
where we had ourselves swimming in an ocean
of heightened desires that mixed sweat and water
in the heat of our first translation of love as a verb,
or the night we danced in Vegas before
deciding to gamble our lives and futures
by playing the game of marriage in the noon sun
that mingled with the intensity of our love,
or the life we shared as a single organism trying
to wade through the leaves of jealousy and the niche
of old age in the jungle of married life;

please give these flowers that she may recall me
crying by her side after the gods saw it fit
to deliver her to the boat of Charon and
pierced my heart with these flowers
of everlasting sorrow.