Only Themselves Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Imaginations of all of those castles—
Over-spilling while the wash is just becoming done,
Over the beds that we cannot realize,
Over the imaginations of the setting sun:
While I have had so many muses,
Just as I have had so many housewives—all of the while
Burning, and yawning in their bouquets of
Echoes, waiting for the last setting days to be done:
Until all of their spirits are extinguished underneath
Of the mountains—
And while all of their daydreams become so luminescent
As anywhere else—
And the housewives come busily towards them,
Like red-cross workers trying to save
The mouths of foxes,
Trying to find another clear path underneath of the power-lines
And down to the Everglades without ever a glance
For anyone else—
As the knights or whoever they are starve in their own
Palmettos—and the daydreams of wherever they are
Learn to take care of only themselves.