Classic Poem

Afterwards there are dogends in
the ashtray
sheets heavy with her perfume and
our sweat
I don't want to change, rumpled, a
curled
about her attitude I imitate in sleep
the smell of her on my skin, a towel
awry
in the bathroom, the floor clouded
with talcum
with careful intaglio of two
footprints
all patched on this translucent
autumn weather
and its Veronese foliage, each leaf
outlined and brushed with decay I
interpret
as longing for a mythical landscape
all my fallacies are pathetic.

Sometimes I think I live only in my
head
where she walks in a Golden Age
I echo
with this lead shadow when we day
after
day made consort of each other's
smiles.
Yet I know it is just that those four
her hours were swift as Indian summer
this now has winter's black and
measured tread.