That Cannot Be This Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Cars who pattern a rush of galvanized needs-
Every bouquet has a patina,
And sound recedes; and I look sad and gone
Along the winter walks of Spain,
My eyes in the penumbra of a dead and dying poet’s
Olive tree,
Even though I am quite happy- In the somnolent
Opulence of my anonymity:
Each word spilled out from the backwardly winnowing
Loom,
Each word a rerun cartoon,
Doing its best to amuse itself by the memory of your
Eyes,
Trying to dance awake the little kittens of your narcoleptic
Soul,
And pretend that you need us to make you whole,
When you are already over spilling, when you already have
So many friends who’ve already begun to show you all the
Best that is in the world,
While we are just in our little corner in art class,
Little fingers doodling, and it does us no good to matter in
The lines, no matter how good we do:
Each word is wrong, a fumbled match the unwavering waves
Can have, crashing against the seawall where they would
Have nothing grow,
And rather un resilient catastrophe no one notices like a latchkey
Storm cloud bivouacked underneath a street light,
Not even Rudyard Kipling,
Breathing around it all the atmospheres replete with the beauty
That cannot be his.