The Name Of The Man You Were Bound To Love Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I’m warmed by Spanish blood-
And the hills flood. The regiments are in
Ruin,
Orange trees are, yes, tremulous; it is what they’ve
Always been doing;
But have you ever cared before:
Driving in your car in the deep airconditioning,
While I was so far away and so terribly scarred- and balmy,
Bending paper to make airplanes
Attended by unimportant stewardesses ghosting with
Your old last name:
In the tomb I play in is eternal: I’ve leapt over the
Coal-fired ruins of a campfire attended by the bent faces
Of so many pretty adolescent boys who grew
Away from me;
But didn’t I keep to you, leaping like a gazelle over each
Sumptuous irrigation just to bring out my telescope,
Erecting it under a finished blue sky- to get a look at
You:
But could you really care, pretty- pretty: Maybe you come
Around once in a hundred years, cold centaur leaping out
Of your soap-opera comas: Could you really care?
That I jogged the entire neighborhood for you-
That I made up dreams and reanimated conquistadors from
The blue dunes for you;
And that I have become lost and terribly unfortunate
Just to call up your mix breed;
That I drank enough on that day of the communal fieldtrips
That I shouldn’t have to recall my name,
And remember that, alas, it was not the name of the man
You were bound to love….