So splendor’s blue irony
discharges the wardens
of Winter’s hospital:
Spring at the yielding gates.
Retaliate in kind,
mélange of defense and insult
and the wry uncoupling of
illuminated seasons.
Emphysema has gilded the city’s lungs
and in the golden light
of a last morning,
sleeved in pink and almost playing upon a flute,
death flirts like a harlequin,
appearing, unseen, at
Persephone’s shoulder.