Scabbards Of A Vanquished World Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You are so beautiful, and you whisper;
And you come to me out of the waves like an ex-wife,
And these are some of the things that we say together,
As we sat together alone in our two chairs in front of my little house
On whatever road I live on behind the ixora hedges,
And we looked at Armando’s picture together today, and I made fun of
You and said that he was your boyfriend,
As I wrapped my arm around you as if we were in a movie theatre where
I was having a hard time dreaming:
Now I am drinking all of my rum, as the fish swim in the unlucky sea,
As you had to go back to your man without a second thought of me;
Only that you decided that you wanted to linger, that you didn’t
Wish to go home,
And the only problem of it was that you said you had your two children
Who needed their father, even when he is gone;
And he put his hands on you last night, Alma, and you made love,
While I slept on the roof of the empty house three doors down from
Your parents’ home, and I wept into the negatives of
Crepuscule,
And I didn’t give a damn except for Catholic girls birthed much nearer
The equator-
And I had a thought: that the world was so big, Alma, except that you live
So close to me that I go drunk and hiked to your doorstep last night,
And I could almost feel your body returned to me like a
Spear in my side,
So that the open wounds spilling their guts underneath airplanes was where
I ended up sleeping;
And then I walked home and feel asleep, and when I awakened found you
On my door, knocking,
And I let you in, my best hope for a living, breathing daydream,
Like a beautiful flower pushing her head rebelliously up amongst the graveyards and scabbards of a vanquished world.