On a spring Sunday, as flowers Pick up speed amidst gathering green Foliage,

And when heat is yet to course Down the back as sticky rivulets Of sweat,

Standing in a stand of beeches With freshly hatched leaves, A man thinks

Of a woman who keeps saying Life seems quite useless, and that Beauty is for

Poets or such self absorbed queers. She herself is quite beautiful when She says this.

He knows this: beneath her bronzed Skin lie seasons of blood and bile, pus And pain

Waiting to break over the coast Of time and occasion. He knows this: Transcendence is

Rarely a given, and love, much sought, Is found less and less by the starved And starving.

He knows this: before he reaches the end Of this line, hundreds will fall, with flies Settling over

The unburied, for always someone gets fed Even if others die of hunger. So what must Be done with

This knife, and this the vein, This flower, and this its vine, This living, and this its death?

for M.M