The Virtues Of Believing Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Foxes with pretty smiles competing for badges:
While the final battle looms nearer- as death has its way
Over the pretty chariots and the purple wedding
Processions,
As I proposition my heart for her, and the maggots turn into
Flies, smiling so many ways in their eyes:
As my parents’ home is repossessed by the bank:
As the mountain is repossessed by the sea- and it all flies away,
As the strata grows deeper and more mystifying:
While upon the birthday cake I watched Alma blow her wishes:
And for a moment they all must have seemed to come true
Until the dreamer arose
Accepting the inevitable absence of belief: the dead were dead
And un colorful, and the moon had arisen but was a thief:
And the light it was giving to the holocaust of languishing sailors
Was sending them the wrong way,
And shipwrecking the righteous upon the petulance of reef:
The baseball players were harpies, and Jason never found the fleece:
And the virtues of believing were all beyond belief.