No breath left to dissemble

 



Now I must stray

from appearance or action,

              because there will not be another image of him

              to superimpose upon the rest and sum over histories



 to derive an unwavering

awareness of the person

              inside him. I must now, on my own, perform the re-

              construction while he still blows on the hair



on her neck though

the pursuit is long-

              forgotten and he dead afresh

              has no breath left to dissemble.



He abused

his talent, or,

              misused is more potent a word

              for his use of that naïve ability to reinvent



or be swayed such that

beginnings happened

              everywhere and always for him,

              happened as each flees her own enemy. . .



Despairing of his own

inner construction

              he prolonged himself, not so skilled in self

              -destruction, feeding *sterilem*, futile, *amorem*,



love with his own

destruction or hope, sperando,

              *nutrit*. What patina of desire (of care)

              so often unpolished her skin



that skin morphed

into bark

              with arresting varnish, while she stood

              wounded and rooted to the earth,



and she unmoving,

became the pivot

              about which unreason willed the act of turning,

              dependence made mechanical and fixed,



reflexive even. I am

left to wonder

              will her foliage survive with his death

              or will it fade along with the calculated forms



on his forearms—

artistry, or, willingness—

              perhaps his lyric or quivers (in death)

              habebunt, *will have*, her still. If not,



perhaps in death

he might

              render her in alabaster not laurel

              with sharper touch and blunter brambles



and perhaps then will I mourn.