From Which You Have So Faithfully Have Strayed Poem by Robert Rorabeck

A casual touch to be the end of me, like the purring of
A ghost:
I carried your cigarettes to the cemetery, and you were
The most utmost;
But you could not linger in my dally,
Weren’t your eyes made of far away:
Weren’t they just as newly painted as the happenstance of
An all of a sudden story,
And I will not say your name to save me:
My joy was the joy of a firework making for a moment
The curb brilliant,
Making even the most religious of mailmen hesitate:
All of these colors foaming and sizzling down into your
Hot plate;
And this was just you out there in the outstanding cold,
Lost for a little while pressed to the jubilee of a needy child at
His favorite game:
Hot and wild, until my paper flamed and curled,
And all that I loved darkened and mewed to you, which made
You realize that I wasn’t your favorite,
And that this wasn’t even real, and that you had a home,
And a father whose warmth was even more certain that the empty
Darkness to which you
No longer linger, from which you so faithfully have strayed.