ISSUE: Spring 1976
Childless I am now, and eyeless,
with hollow sockets staring like
doorways of abandoned buildings,
I stand like the black-burned post
of a barbed wire fence, waiting
for blood and time to flow again,
where all the laughter was desperate
laugh, and demon dance, and morning
watch washed grey with silence,
and I no more than rain furrows
on a sooted window.
There is no music in me now
but the clatter of cups, no vision
but rooftops from the breakfast table
and the flush of your face at morning.
And I have found no courage but to meet
your stare, and let you turn slowly
inside me until I am old, still warm
with your breath, and burning
for your children. Come then,
the summer dreams are barren.
