Who’s this fellow wearing the aftershave lotion
with the slim figure embracing you, Fidelia,
in the rose garden beside
the artificial hill?
I suppose that he’s nameless and legion, for whom
you loosen your golden abundant sensuous
hair. For the rest of his life
he’ll weep over this hour,
whimper himself green deploring inconstancy,
make hack metaphors that associate fickle
seas with storms and dread shipwrecks—
this same amorous boy
who sighs with pleasure now, credulous of yellow
tresses, loyalty, and unfading loveliness—
ignoring the Oedipal
weather of history.
Ridiculous that he suffers this ecstasy
over you! Horsecollar knows, who points a moral
of shipwreck and survival
as he drips saltwater.