She thought of white roses
when she saw his innocent face
and saw the thick green plummet
of my death in his eyes.
She never understood all his thunderbolt lovers
and brothers, those who saw
what happened to me in this abyss.

Those were days when friends said:

When we used pagan calendars but never knew time at all.
So here I am and I know there is a way out
but I can't use the stairs.

The way out lies where oaths
also wait in ambush (for him too),
like villains on a deserted reach,
and after the journey what?

If there is a building for us there're no walls.
If there are walls there're no windows.
And if there are windows--
they reveal only illusions
Not easily seen beyond.

There is no one now who can protect
an innocent traveler.

No, I am gone from him for good now,
But a little hope is like rhythm to a musician.
I'm the measure of the double bar, the repeat,
you can hear me at any spring festival.

The rose that she gave him sits now on his desk.
He doesn't want it, mother-love.
Though it never hurt to breathe its scent,

at times it writhes upon him,
its tail swallowing him
like Kekule's dream snake,
smothered in a benzene-circle.

Tugging at him now she says:

She wakens him at seven because a girl wants her flower.
Like churchbells want death when war begins.
And in his Sunday pockets there's a page he carries
that reeks of my consequences.

In half-remembrance he pulls it out and reads it to her:
"He had such elan, Mother,
like some journalism of the imagination
that will not die in me."