The Metamorphosis Of A Banished King Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Showing off how more or less corrupt I am
Than you,
I drink on my floor as I remember the passageways of
Roadways,
And the sunlit calypso through the palms,
The baying of the dogs to the evaporates of the sea:
The strange, unkindling light that never reads
But somehow happens into weddings, into New Years
And resurrections-
The effortless houses up and down the street
Overgrown with the resilient promises who like cenotaphs
Bend and crumble overtime,
Replacing honeymoons with the hapless shells of
Conquested knights and conquistadors
A witch’s laughing echoes inside them, and ferns hang:
Tadpoles in their sweat,
And the metamorphosis of a banished king.