Was it mere notoriety which led the thrill-seekers
to her door? Crowding to peer, premise-wide,
past the bars of her windows to some enticement
both forbidden and affirming?
The seas she’d crossed they’d only read about in
books, but they had traced her circuit among
the devil’s stalls, knew her dead lovers’ nicknames
by fanatic heart. Within her blossom fortress
she paraded her naked scars, elusive poisons
as common as basil, as underfoot as spaniels.
Should she throw wide her doors to their stumble
and awe, smiling but silent as they questioned
each discovery? The bush of blinded nightingales,
the pornographic gold tableaux, the turbans
(with scalps attached), the vials of open-sea allergies,
the maps of the Underworld and yes, the unreadable
map of Heaven?
Should she throw wide her doors to their tumble
and grovel and, as she knew already, their someday
jaded sigh and dismissal, dispersing through her garden,
leaving her door unlocked, her fame a known and now
small thing?