They said he used them
as children use sugarcubes
& lick Popsicle stems
True in years
melodrama seized
with chalice & dapple
True of letters
to beloveds
poisoned by excess
True of fatherly elegy,
of sentences crushed
under grief's iron
True marking absences
as with March crocus
missed by desert-dwellers
True of mileposts
left on the tarmac
& like distances dismissed
True of recipes
& wines
& radiance of skin
True of sight, scene
& measure of sound
dehydrated into nouns
-- their mass
dissolving to proto-pronouns
droned-on, domiciled
True of a world
without gradation, stalked
by actor-brutes & the acted-upon
Which is, he said,
removing hand from furrowed brow,
ungood
October 2011