Tonight you wear a jacket lined with the shot silk
Of your early years, color of the silver-dull, Irish farthings
In relief of little lyres.
Is it true I will not be here to look after you. What will.
Who will comb your cowlick down?
Never-minding the girl of myself
I once ruined, wittingly, with magnolia boughs and willfulness.
For example:
My extravagance of gesture;
The maize field fallowed from simplicity; redundancy,
The green wind of reckoning.
Did you say I’ve said “Lark” for the last allotted time?
Have I ever—even once—been disingenuous, not told you
Of the truth and nothing but.