Its four eyes were dead as stars and floated

in a storefront jammed with shoelaces,

snakes of dust, parched leather tongues.

It slept when I did and woke when I was wandering

and the rest of the heat-befuddled city dozed.

I can’t say how you’d hurt me.

Even the breeze that rushed through windows

bearing the smell of onions and cut flowers

made me so wretched that when I shut my eyes

a stream of apparitions rose up, hideous,

rigid, rotting, begging to be let in.

There’s no reason to fear the end of love

when you live as Washington Irving did

in a stone cottage on the river bluff,

sipping port from tumblers in the library,

writing there in the morning for the eastern light

then dining at table for hours until the sun sets.

It’s 1820. We could read to one another

from the Spanish mysteries, or recline

side by side on the turquoise satin fainting sofa.

One of the nieces is practicing a quadrille on the upright

and we dance slowly out from the parlor to the slate porch,

down to the pads of moss at the river’s edge

and back. The long embroidered curtains blow

a stiff white in the candlelight.

In the barn nod three plump calves in stantions.

The quail run practically tame in from the woods.

And the two-headed lamb: the lamb

is arching one lustrous neck.

From the slice its blood will softly spurt.

The other face weeps soundlessly, unconsolable,

or bares its teeth in mirth.