dummy

“carat”

Delilah, Delilah, Delilah,
all the big girls are named Delilah.
All this Delilah I know
wants me to do is come
see a trick she can do with quarters.
I don’t know. What if Delilah steals
my shirt? I don’t think I can do it.
I don’t think I can follow Delilah.
But maybe Delilah’s cousin—
her name is Delilah, too, but she’s thin.
I can write my Delilah
love letters from Monte Carlo.
Dear Delilah, O the white sands.
Here is the Mice, see how they run.

Someone will say what you are.
I do not think
you are a headstone
or a heavenstone. Maybe
you are a hearthstone.
Maybe you are one. I could
build a fire. Raise from
your hands. Maybe
this slippery and smooth path
of stones equals fire. Maybe
there are dank rugs
and difficulty. Maybe
ballast, and difficulty
in a hard week, a stony creek. We
can return.

Its aftereffects:
silver hand-mirror and turquoise comb,
antique dresser and peeling wall.
                                                 Through east window
our tenement-space: blinds light-creaked,
dew on some outer pane vap’ring like dust.

The building: derelict of grand hotel—
Parisian, gargoyle-decked,
lauds already singing in Huysmanic fashion…

Sunday? say Sunday.

The note should be unintelligible,
scrawled in haste:
the hand left only minutes before. (That blank sheet
with those crazy indents desire makes.)

Regarde:
“Je suis allé à la plage. Grab einkaufen gegangen. Last night, ooh,
marvelous. Soon. Soon, love.”

Clear of the pavingstones you step lightly over
down to the café: I reset my watch.

(4/2002)