This Unfortunate This Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pain in a terrible candle of gold:
Leaping above the traffic, blinding the lighthouse,
And the better avenues down which I am
Too dumb to travel;
There I am in a little forgotten space, looking up
With my dogs,
Combining our senses to realize the least of imperfect
Things,
Even if she does exist, flickering like the last
Frictions of ash-
Smelling like an orchard where the ghosts sleep;
And then I lay down on the stones,
And pray to her- oracular but ashamed, while
The tourists trundle by
Bleeding loose change- dissected on the spot,
It feels as if for a while I shouldn’t
Have to exist;
Then the wound opens more revealing a little clearer
This unfortunate this.