Modern Lucrezia

by Stuart Dischell

 

for Andrea del Sarto

 

Tell me my modern Lucrezia
Why it is this or that
Or occasionally also when we
Find our loves together.
The reasons for the reasons
You have given me I sometimes question.
But it is only in dim light I know
Answers to facts which answer nothing.
You say I breathe life to your lips
Although your return is graveyard cold.
I feel the falling out has come for
You no longer know my pain.
When the jester spoke to the fool
They both revealed nothing.
My Lucrezia, the piers are splintering
And the shade of you no longer cools.
My body snags truth
                    like a nut zipped up
                                        in a drunken man’s fly

 

Some say Stuart Dischell’s reputation will skyrocket with the publication of his first book, Rising Tired. (Fall 1974)