dead men's love.

There was a damn successful poet;

There was a woman like the sun.

And they were dead. They did not know it.

They did not know their time was done.

They did not know his hymns

 were silence; and her limbs,

that had served love so well,

Dust, and a filthy smell.

And so one day, as ever as the old,

hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;

on fire to cling and kiss and hold

and in others eyes, to see

each his own tiny face

and in that long embrace

Feel lip and breast grow warm

to breast and lip and arm.

So knee to knee they sped again,

and laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told

Across the streets of hell

And then;

they suddenly felt the wind blow cold,

And knew, so closely pressed,

chill air on lip and breast

and, with a sick surprise,

the emptiness of eyes.

© Bunguswa.