LOVE IS DEAD

—love is dead. The slow

red rush, & in the absence of love we

raise steel walls

& castanet airs to dance

by. Love is gone

& all tenderness faded,

& in its place castles of knowing

in which we

pass our time from

hand to hand.

Hands which once pressed

earth into the shape of men & earth

into bowls for holding

nothing but sound, between sound

silence, melodic, & if dissonance

then beauty in dissonance as well, but always

the bowl,

shaped by hands,

made of earth & music

for lovers to dance by, & when the age

of dancing passed, to mourn by, & the when the age

of mourning passed, to burn

& lie in death.