Some new arrival’s coming, whose name may not be happy.
Attend it. Childishly lovely, once, to listen to anyone new
as if even the oldest harm was outgrown as a liberty bodice.
Does sifting through damage ease, or enshrine it; how grasp
a past, but not skid on embittered accounting? The ledgers
exhibit their black surplus malice and red lack of tenderness,
while ‘suffering’ easily gets competitive as each suspects hers
was the rougher lot, yet feels shy out of shame at her history
that won’t dovetail with her present. Hoist personalised flags
though they’re so stiff with encrusted blood they’d first need
a good sousing in tears? – forget that. Could the years have
been easier if you’d just settled early on hating a sex instead,
although which one of them to begin with? Sleeked up your
plumes to swan out and ruffle your usual vexers of dailiness?
Filed reports to the muses, via cicadas’ surveillance, on men
who weren’t rapt, only dozing in warm grass at noon, lulled
by music to dreaming their sonic enchantment is virtuously
militant, a sparkly art stance plus a strong civic end in itself?
It’s late. ‘You must live as you can’, which is all we ever did.