The Muscular Syllables Of His Golden Bed Poem by Robert Rorabeck

How to be beautiful at night all alone
Covered in a layer of sod, making love to no woman,
And minding no woman all the same:
I don’t know,
But that there is no amusement in this: my filthy face
Has no grin,
But listen and I can still hear the traffic and the little things
Still being stolen:
There is still one light on in the RV, but I have never known
A woman whose name still is Erin:
I have never known her, and how sweet that the snowflakes do
Not fall, that beautiful women
Are still walking out properly trimmed, still walking out
To get married, or just to think of him;
And I go out too, all in the banished light of so many Churches:
Yes, the light is blue,
And my throat is cut; and it lurches, and when my body is stilled,
Yes, it still breathes; it gathers up her perfumes, and inhales
Her bouquets; and this is my little plot of crippled
Daisies under her windowsill waiting for her like a mortified
Fortuneteller, while she makes the sounds of his name
Strung out in the muscular syllables of his golden bed.