Skull and Hourglass

Skull and Hourglass

Skull and Hourglass

Hold them there inside that golden room,
their faces flushed, their bellies full of food
and that girl’s, surely – look at her smile – with love,
settling its milky pool in some pelvic nook;
 
hold that man, hale and loud, laughing
down the cleavage of some woman not his wife
whose small black eyes look out at us as if
we might know to keep the secret of her life.
 
Hold them there before
the old sorrow creeps in
over the bleared plates and sticky rims,
the ruched, exhausted cloth, before the night
 
has lost all it promised at dusk when the swans
shone their loneliness out on the black lake.