In The Singing Shadows Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The words go mumbling from their tomb,
And the labyrinth of spy holes where pride
Has led the thirsty man,
So now little girls laugh down and guess at his
Name, the dark stranger of scars,
And it isn’t fair because he cannot see,
But can only guess at their curls,
And if they might be princesses painted up
For the vermilion festival, and the sacrifice of
Scarlet bulls who once took away their mothers
Across the highways of iridescent seas;
Though he is amazed by this spacious coffin he
Has defiled, for he might die anywhere though
He wishes he could see stars
And feel the wind lifting his feet off the grass;
Or find the heart of the coy architectures, for
In there is the reason for his fool heartedness,
For wasn’t it the godking of the old dominion,
The seller of everything with a handsome smile,
Who took away the shadows which he loved,
And the woman who lived in them, silent as the
Bosom of a stone, even if he only beheld her from
Across the street, and didn’t know her;
He has sailed the broken seas to this spot and
Become entombed beneath the eyes of laughing
Children, just to be lost in the tangling veins,
Like the branches of a hollow tree
Which once chased the light until it all failed,
So as he succumbs to the inevitable plot
Where the little dust will forever mote his bones,
He can hear her breathing once more, in the
Singing shadows under the stone.