You Beckoned? Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I am wounded attend to me with liquor,
D.H. Lawrence and snake bights:
Your eyes sumptuously vermilion across the
Patio like hauntingly drunken street lights;
I am famished from these bullet wounds,
These hungry pen-knives: Poor it in each a thimble
Full, listen to each pullulate like tom cats
Down in the harshest grottoes after midnight-
Then attend to me no more, for the sea is crying from
Its futility and yours; and yet you have so many hours
And so many worlds- So many children that tend
To occur as epiphanies of your higher altitude beauty;
But you have done enough for this dying soldier,
Your plastic paramour: He who will never be talented
Enough to procure your lasting beauty; but transcend him
To the sea, his queuing mother and enter him into her
Foaming doors- become him awash in agony,
And step lightly where no one else should have to see
This sad sight getting carried away: Trace the steps you took to
Find his stone-cursed morgue, and attend again to those
Living men your voice yet implores; and beckon them
To do your bidding, to bring you children and whatever more;
For they are of the kind living, and they will love you
For ever more- So says the lost one vanished with the
Waves cursing upon the shore- I am sure; I am sure.