For My Songs To You Unlistening Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pitiless night, undress me to no one,
And publish me in the pit of an entombed unicorn,
Throbbing with the still life deep beneath the sea:
Take me to museums of mausoleums
And play my quieting face to all the shade of empty playgrounds
Where the chalk no longer steps:
Where the silent voices have it right, because I am sure that I
Am doing nothing either good nor properly:
But I will soon have my mute house and my boneless dogs,
And I will yet think of you turning, turning like bright candles
In the air-conditioned Mandela’s of your cars;
And I will think that there still may be time to tramp barefooted
Underneath the cones of slash pine trees,
And to listen to the old and yet extinct teachers making love in
The sad groves and overgrown parks, because that is just
What they were made to be doing; and this night is just
Another night for my songs to you unlistening.