Entombed Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My love returns to nothing.
Dead relatives place black tulips on
My living tomb, as her eyelids flap like ravens
Around the branches of another man—
She is hung on him, like a horse-thief
On a bough he’s sentenced on, the engraved
Strangulation of one heart distracted for
A lifetime— When there are many numbers
Which might lead me down streets coated
With the trails she leaves, they are the
Mathematics of men already dead,
Haunting the sunny crypts of married
Women, their souls dredging the deepest
Bottoms, perpetually looking upwards
Toward the faintest light she casts down
Carelessly, the parts she casually sheds
Like the blushing skin of a reptilian bride,
Blinding manna settling before them,
The thoughtless material they use to
Entomb their mortally wounded hearts.