Their Forgotten Memories Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You morons,
while the night was leaking peonies,
I strutted to the castle.

In bad repair underneath the moonlights,
the skeletons were baking breads they
could not eat
and placing them on the tables-

I do not care
how many butterflies came down from
the moonlights,
or how many lovers were interred
in the drive in movie theatres;

or about the hungry, toothed creatures
who cannot speak for themselves-

I have rewalked the catacombs of that eerie
high school-
I used to work there, but I was not paid to leave:

From there, the busses turn around in their
casual migrations:
with the sun rising upon her virginal shoulderblades,
Closing our eyes now, we can almost pretend
to believe that this is
Disney World:

I have seen prettier girls married there
only to awaken hungered, classified,
The feral conquistadors pinning corsages with
Crossbows against her door:

There she is a saint we have forgotten
Taking broken metals to the scrap yard:
While our eyes left her, she awakened beautifully for a moment,
but while she yawned and budded a sleeping garden,
She awakened a grandmother,

And the skeletons of her once presumptive bachelors gathered
with thorny stems of vanished roses, pressing their forgotten
memories against her eternal door.