THE DEATH OF PIERROT Long out of their season, the fruit trees
They had both loved the candlelit woman.
Fame is lonely and tragical--
A tropic society does not suddenly
Small Hours.
Long after guests say nothing to arouse interest
Sunup.
The last guests balance plates of burnt eggs on their knees,
Here's Edwin Booth pacing his bedroom floor
Here's Edwin Booth suffering each vulture
Downstairs
at the Players' Club, dinner
Poor company he keeps here,
Copyright 2001 by Amber Vogel
--after Gérôme
That was the loneliest way toward fame--
In winter, the path leading the duellists
Through the garden, and the orchard,
And on to a field of snow.
Were black and dying that night,
But the man trembling through them
Was alive with what he knew now.
He was fierce with news of his own sweet life.
She was distracted by dessert, a summer
Plum imported for their supper.
She was slipping the skin off its soft meat.
A drop of blood, red as a plum, it falls
Toward its own shadow on the white, white snow.
¤ ¤ ¤
INVITATION TO ANOTHER ONE-PARTY STATE
Soirée.
Without some preparation collapse in a heap.
Quite often there is a party thrown beforehand
Under fairy lights draped on trees near a river.
A combo plays at a hotel gone to seed there.
Or suspicion, and leave with their own wives, and guests
Retreat to the bar and are never seen again,
And one guest dives neatly into the empty pool,
And musicians leave with left-over canapés
Carefully wrapped in their pockets, there remain guests.
Relentlessly madcap,they throw off their good shoes
And determine to dance through the trees till breakfast.
And beers on the arms of deck chairs by the river.
The sun seems to rise just to herald such jolliness.
Quite often a dripping-wet hippopotamus
Snorting like a bull crashes from the tall grass now.
¤ ¤ ¤
VULTURE HOURS
Here's an American insomniac
Waiting for sleep to come like a comet.
And pushing his hand through his long white hair.
Hour.
Ended, members play billiards and set
The balls rolling like planets on the felt,
Play cards, sip brandy under the Sargent
(A sad and handsome Booth), and raise a toast
To their friend.
In this country, this universe, despair.
Here his one companion, full awake,
Turns its hood-eyed head on its crooked neck.
