Subterfuge of romance, because what other sort
Of subterfuge is there: all at once running away from war,
Running into France,
Looking at her gondola underneath all of those soft lights of
Romance:
Looking up her body like along the soft pews on Sundays:
Looking along her body and seeing her secret rosaries; and kissing
Them,
And speaking to them as if they were a soda fountain of your
Unborn children,
While the sky just fumes: while it is packaged by cool jets;
While its bodies of seraphim divide to multiply, like schoolyards
Of tankards of jellyfish in the sea;
And I wish so many times that I was better at these amusements:
Wish that I was really taking off all of her diamonds of her old
Times and speakeasies:
And this is all she is, folding down like fresh laundry in the dorm room
Of her freshmen,
Trapping her like the innocent nuances of all of my neophytes:
A dime of blood, a ruby seed, a blushing point and then a whisper of
A sea.
Robert Rorabeck
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/then-a-whisper-of-a-sea/
