First, it’s antique, renunciation
of that which one does not have—
“Look what you made me do,”
and gathering my skirts about me I depart.
Sometimes there’s a private ruckus, roaming
moaning; the shutters bang
while behind stippled glass the party
cozies by the fire and the spinet jigs.
One could spend much deflecting the avowal
that, should it come, is yet not quite
the flaying, or salt wine, one had in mind
as adequate adoration.
Cut the sob stuff. There’s a mountain—write about that,
how its shoulders shift away to dull bruise-blue—