And so I write, "Love paces out its exile
        beneath an Arch of Triumph." What the meanwhile
        does that mean--pacing is going nowhere
        and the arch is built to remind a war

        to bring tourists. Overhung by that shrine
        (till infantry is the prose of pavements)
        time remains a frieze from a waxworks famine--
        vista in which we cum, sweat, become silent.

        Like a monkey caught in an orange pharmacy,
        love conditions the fool to riot reason...
        But from the corners that climax has not stirred, coldly

        a cacti acrobat holds the horizon forth as
        an ideal of what constitutes refuge, pane
        deposit, distant, though its cuppings could kill us.

Copyright © Bill Knott, 2002 All Rights Reserved.