Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poems

Inclination

88 Inclination Money does not buy death Death yields itself Under a droplet of poison and dark stairs In quest of death We wander with those Whose scaffolds have no noose to offer us We search for death in towns where iron does not rust Look for it in a cheetah’s talons that have been removed We buy a place to die under the shade of a tree by a monolith or in a fickle heart But we cannot be interred on a bridge 89 Death does not bar one’s way I do not know why At the gates of the execution grounds I was withheld I do not know how The dagger auctioneer shall treat me Why did I make the final bid When I had no money to make it good Perhaps I could borrow from death A hundred bars of gold or Half-a-world Perhaps I could ask of death my child whom a girl is destroying in her womb into another’s womb to deliver However by that time the shades of night fall on caged beasts at the far end of the passageway 90 I am inclined that I be unfaithful to death I am inclined that I tell you Locked in that dream is my death That you did not relate I am inclined that the dream you bore I repeat before you and fall dead ...