The Jobs Of Clean Men Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Your daughter has all those long lashes crying away
To better parts
Where I thought I should belong- where so many boys thought
To have liked;
And I swing alone in my parks and cast eyes into the mountebanks
Of shadows, the genteel lonelinesses:
I have learned about Simon Believer, and I think of you and your
Daughter and Alma
While almost all of the airplanes slip across the moon with
The acuity of keen mental telepathy;
And underneath much of this penumbra your body pulsates and bleeds;
It is breathing but wounded, and it goes out into the snow
And tries to make romance with anything- While I drink mojitos all the
Way down your slopes,
And I look at pictures of you specifically, cradling your daughter
Sweating in a dreamland I guess none of us will ever figure out;
But you will always be someone special,
Even when the jet engines fail and fireballs weep like tears of a sun
We can’t understand;
And I drink mojitos and laugh at the jobs of clean men:
And I put on my armor and I kiss the creche of your apathetic soul;
Or I dream of Alma, which in Spanish means almost the same.