And this one is called "The One Whose Reproach I Cannot Evade."
She sits in her glass garden and awaits the guests.
The sailor with the blue tangerine.
The fish clothed in languages.
The dolphin with a revolver in its teeth.
Dusk enters from stage left, its voice
falls like dew on the arbor.
Tiny bells sway in the catalpa tree.
What is it she hopes to catch in her net of love?
Petals?
Conch shells?
The night moth?
She does not speak.
Tonight, I tell her, no one comes.
You wait in vain.
Yet, at eight precisely, the moon opens its theatric doors.
An arm rises from the fountain.
The music box, face down on her tabouret,
swells and bursts its cover.
A tinkling flood of rice moves over the table.
And she smiles at me, false believer.
Smiles and goes in.
Leaving the garden empty, and my thighs half
eaten by the raging twilight.
That poem, incidentally--
I have been accused, or praised, or something--
It has a lot of theatrical poetry.
I guess it is.
The more I actually look at that poem,
the more I think it must be, unconsciously,
or semi-consciously inspired by Jean Couteau.
Well, not Couteau's poetry, but some
of his imagery and his films, like Orpheus
and The Blood of a Poet.
I think that's where it came from.
I'm not sure.