Even Before Men Learned How To Fly Poem by Robert Rorabeck

An empty crib at me feet,
A bottle in my lips—
And it is time to hear my dog breathing,
My wife lost in the other room
Of the tiny yellow house,
Her mind still speaking mandarin
As it always will,
But the oily haunts of the daylight gone—
The illusions of the sun light's architectures
Sunken into the other side of
The vanished swings—
And I have grey hair, and yet I can
Dance like a little boy—
All over the stage of the graveyard
As it pretends to appreciate me—
And the illusions I give of beauty,
Like fireworks lit off before the teaming eyes
Of foxes who want to drink all of
The time, even before Rome—
And I imagine one fox crying there,
Weeping at the foot of Calvary
Up to the vineyard that he was supposed to
Believe in even before men learned
How to fly.