My life’s great tower fallen, from base to rafter,
Across this deranged bed with its blot of blood,
Appalling lover, where are the flowers of our laughter,
The bright river of your thought in flood?
The flowers that ringed the tower are crushed and blind,
The warm quicksilver look to blankness turned,
That enormous book of wise, compassionate mind
Slammed shut: bones, rags, and papers to be burned.
Kneeling I touch your unresponding knees
That proved unable to outrace, outclimb
The panic of self, the world’s pursuing pain.
Rising I look unseeing through palls of time
On this poor shattered tower that did contain
So long my all that mattered, my joy of being.