To An Old Poet Dying Young

In your L.L. Bean crewneck andfizzle of white hair and beard

you look as two-dimensional

as the maps on which I trace

your fractures and seams of travel.

Paris, San Francisco, Crete,

Japan; and now upstairs

overlooking Paradise Valley

you run your fingers over the spines

of dusty books and profess

your lack of profession at eighty,

women your only profession,

if I must account for you. Thira,

a sullen little volcano,

blew apart thirty-five hundred

years ago, clearing a space

where the suffering of flesh

against stone became your subject,

where the Mediterranean changed

blue to grey to amber. So what

if you lied? We all lie. Now,

with death a sure bet, you linger

over troubled sheets of paper

and watch snow fuss at the window

and brew tea of perfect amber.

I know you’re thinking of burning

your papers again. You’re thinking

about repose, how restless

your corpse will feel, how shivery

in that fresh new sweater, how soon

your books will outlive you, how young

Paris seemed in the Forties

when your dying had hardly begun.