ROMANTIC EPILOGUE

Don’t read me if you haven’t
attended the funerals of strangers
or at least memorial services.
If you haven’t
divined the strength
that makes love
the rival of death.
If you haven’t flown a kite on Clean Monday
without monkeying with it.
pulling on the string continually.
If you don’t know if Nostradamus ever
sniffed flowers.
If you haven’t been at least once
to the Deposition from the Cross.
If you don’t know any past perfect.
If you don’t love animals
and, especially, squirrels.
If you don’t hear thunder with pleasure,
wherever you are.
If you don’t know that the handsome Modigliani
drunk at three in the morning,
pounded furiously on a friend’s door
looking for Villon’s poems
and began to read for hours out loud
disturbing the Universe.
If you call nature our mother and not our aunt.
If you don’t joyously drink the innocent water.
If you don’t understand the Flowering Era
is the one you’re living in.
BEWARE
WET PAINT.
Don’t read me
if
you are
right.
Don’t read me if
you haven’t quarrelled with the body . . .
Time I was going,
I have no more breath.

ROMANTIC EPILOGUE