sometimes i see truth
clearly, through the haze, like Phae-
dra waiting for death.


elm



sometimes i see truth
clearly, through haze, like Phaedra
waiting for her death.

Obit - by Robert Lowell, for Elizabeth Hardwick

Our love will not come back on fortune's wheel -

in the end it get us, though a man know what he'd have:
old cars, old money, undebased pre-Lyndon
silver, no copper running through ... old wives;
I could live such a too long time with mine.
In the end, every hypochondriac is his own prophet.
Before the final coming to rest, comes the rest
of all transcendence in a mode of being, hushing
all becoming. I'm for and with myself in my otherness,
in the eternal return of earth's fairer children,
the lily, the rose, the sun on brick at dusk,
the loved, the lover, and their fear of life,
their unconquered flux, insensate oneness, painful "It was."
After loving you so much, can i forget
you for eternity, and have no other choice?"

incidental haiku

• i write you out of
• my book of numbers. the phone
• will be silent now.