Lament

Delilah, Delilah, did you not know
that if you had merely asked I would have
scraped my skull with shears?

If our love was never true, and your aim
always had held steady to thoughts of my betrayal,
I could have been told. On that afternoon
I would have held the current to my breast but
when the dolphins of the dithyrambist visited
their kindness would be refused. I would chase
the fleeing chariot’s tapestry until islands
and inlets became mirages, blown bubbles like a child
until my lungs were full and water became breath
and your indelible laughter reverberated in the ringlets
that I had kept, and we would give the hearts of the cresting
aquarian steeds over to the cause of the assassin.

When they come for my eyes I will scarcely be sorry
to have them gouged. For what reason should I keep
those possessions? Poetry is hollowed and
I care little for the sky and I shall not forget your face
until I depart this earthly prison for the bars of that death
which cannot be destroyed with toothy hacksaw strokes
or a torch blue as false friends or the irises of my love.