To My Muse
Roy Lazarus
9 August 2009, 05:26Saw you standing by the decaying mantelpiece
Suffering my silence – I who have decayed along with it.
And our long walks down wet streets, past empty houses
Have once again failed to find their mark:
For, those of us who must repose in solitude
Have lost our voices in the abyss of silent dreams
Into which we must scream every night.
For what did we swallow the ancient moon
Down a desperate draught of boiling retsina?
Only to watch you arrange and rearrange boxes in my head
With that mute efficiency you always boasted of;
To see me disintegrating upon the leather couch
On which we once made hopeful love?
I think we’ve stared too long, spoken too little –
And being thus blinded and muted and condemned
To an eternal marriage, trapped in a stifling bedroom,
We must, before we grow too weary and resigned to our fate
Cudgel each other to tiny, bloody bits over our nuptial bed.
