Somewhere right now you may rest

assured an old old hand

is putting on a grave the final flower

that will be put there. Too weak

to return again, a rag of memory,

the hand in the corner of its room:

nameless as a piece of cloth,

when a knocking at her locked door

begins and will continue

to the knocking on a sealed lid

and her grave, unremembered from

its first moment. But to return.

Grass will now grow over the flat stone

level with earth that the hand

used to keep visible, restraining

the healing exuberance of nature

in case a chance comer here should want

to read. It is not known

that anyone ever read the stone,

but it is possible, given how many

bicyclists, joggers, walkers, hobby

historians, drunks, and crazy shouters

wander around here, idly eyeing

the dates, inscriptions, urns, and palms.

Even the most erased old limestone

at the foot of the most secluded slope

may be stumbled and pissed on in a summer.

From this stone we are talking about:

once the flame of this last carnation

has gone, all distinction goes

forever, the blades of the rotary mower

alone will visit, passing over

amid the jet, light plane,

and helicopter noise. Therefore

I put this flower of ignorance

that cannot wilt on the hand and the stone,

and leave to wild conjecture

what it means, the ragged pattern

of the graves in rough ranks and files,

as if someone had stored and ordered,

though not too carefully, lumber.

Christ and Apollo

Day was passing outside, crossing the main street of town.

The house shivered to a slow train heavily loaded with coal.

But draped windows in the bedroom made it evening there,

sketchy moulding above the door, poor memory of a Greek cornice.

In the garden, sun-pounded lilies. Arrogant,

they held up their plump and not yet opened beaks.

The mirror, despite catching the corner of a white sheet

and one foot, was almost blank, like a grey sea.

Yes, the white rag thrown on the floor must have come

from the crucifix. The figure is naked, its wrists and ankles

caught in darkness so that it almost seems the rapist

Apollo, the tables turned, his wooden sex nailed helpless

now for soft depredations of the one that he pursued.