Will the Blackleg Drunk


with his enquiring step
     and typewriter finger,
          bring you jacketless back
               to my tiers of painted pine?

Can he translate you, locate
     the nub of your warm passage,
          trace your disorderly plot
               from seaboard to killing floor?

In the hazelnut of a power-cut,
     when you slept, wasted by
          charmer's eyes for days,
               I taped your worn spine shut.

The frontispiece I held in bed,
     or fed upon like a trove
          inside my graceless pocket,
               is marred by cup-rings, ash.

Other books? other rooms?
     I realign my neurotic library,
          the tireless bark of doglike rain
               pounding my buttress for entry.

On the cover-blown front,
     your lyric intones its own river
          in his arms, his bottle, his mouth.
               I will rip you, page from page.