Late Empire

To those who were born wanting, the mornings came cockless, sunless, minus even the question of how,

how to fill them, the pulled, gape-mouthed hours: no spire, no swollen clang of bells would serve. Who

blames them if they wandered lonely, then, spare as exile kings in search of whatever hands that might

crown them? Some few—the favored—found, briefly strutted, then consigned their fevered limbs to loss in

the field whose name is variously Take me, For you and in stunning abundance I turn over, You are lord,

by the grace that is yours, let me kneel. But most, in the end, came to the beautifully rugged but finally

indifferent coast, boa-ed in the only too clear waters of suck, swallow, retreat; suck, swallow. . . . What

was there, at that moment, except to turn back, return to something like home, to the bedroom’s blank and

unbroidered sheets, the faux-fur throws cast resignedly floorward, the invisibly sconced and tapestried walls

that had all day been waiting to receive (part groan, part sung frustration) those stiff commandments that

the walls then—being walls, of course—patiently, with the patience only echo can sustain, gave back.