Horse tranquillizers and miniskirts,
mushroom omelets and roasted garlic,
model trains and stop watches
to tinker at or destroy, on those nights
her brooding insomnia typecasts her
as a plaything of the stars.
And where did they last meet,
alcoholics freed of the tigress?
Chailley-en-Brie? Joigny?
Marolles-en-Hurepoix?
Any of these would make a fine,
if not final, address.
He seals the letter with a panther
of black wax dripped into a pearl
which he heels with his hand.
Holding the envelope up to the light
he squints and discovers how little was left to say.
Bent sinister to the basin and lifting
the hair from her damp neck as she was sick,
he blessed her burning ears with soothing lies.
Next year, in Bu Hasa or Bul Hanine,
they’d drink victory from their enemies’
jeweled and polished skulls, and Scythian-like
they’d inform the withered offspring of their will.