Eric Torgersen

You thrust into the coffin
where your young wife lay cold
and even more hauntingly beautiful
for the tragic manner of her death
every one of your unpublished poems.

The poet in you, you wanted
the gesture to say, had died with her.
You would not love again.
This is the nineteenth century.

But seven years have passed.
There are men with shovels.

If you do love again, how much
do you love yourself,
her memory,
your enchanting new mistress,
poetry?