AMARYLLIS

For myself
I like a pile of sorrow
Thought on a promontory

Tended in nightshade
Monastic and gilt
On cloistered walls

Tapestries aged over
Belladonna ardor
In misericords

Of cantinas
Where scholar-faced
Liars drink.

Moonlit night-
Fall pied jonquil
Or narcissus

Begs luminance
Of plastic lilies
In potter’s field.

At least there
Is something
A little to oppose

Impose suppose
We love them back
Whose mad blossoms

Contradict
The colossal self
Of containment.

Who hold these
Words to atonement
At this altar

Married here
A fatal deftness
For the faint sublime.