An abandoned Song

Tamed by fatigue, we lie on bed;
the rising sun through the trees dyes us red;
in broad daylight her red silk shines,
abandoned, almost Dickensonian.
At last the trees are green on Manderville Street,
blossoms on our few little plants ignite
the morning with their murderous five day's white.
All night I've held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad -
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye -
and dragged me home alive. . . . Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve:
you were in your fifties, and I,
once hand on glass
and heart in mouth,
outdrank the Russians in the heat
of Spinny Hill, fainting at your feet -
too boiled and shy
and poker-faced to make a pass,
while the shrill verve
of your invective scorched the traditional Indian.

Now four years later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to your hollows like a child,
your old-fashioned tirade -
loving, rapid, merciless -
breaks like the Indian Ocean on my head.