You went out with the turning tide
Throwing a few things overboard:
The bound volumes of our years,
O my dear editor, 1933 to ’68,
Promises long kept in sickness and health
A date with Ireland
Barrels of ripe plans
Golden garbage for the gulls
To pick from your wake.
What dark eye smiled from the bore?
What siren sang in the short breeze
Of the ball?
You will never answer me more. Nothing at all.
But forever across the bed you sprawl,
And onto my living heart again, again,
You force the dead weight of that panic and pain
Senseless, impure,
Which you could not contain,
Which no one can explain,
Which I must now endure.