Come, let me love you
When you doze into late afternoon,
propped and pillowed like an exhausted child,
baleful billows from open windows;
when you no longer walk with me by the river,
by sinews of ink and willows
bending beneath the day’s weight and warmth;
when you assume the form of a silent city
no more allied to my ragged heart,
then come, let me love you,
rarefied as the Viceroy tulip of the Dutch Golden Age
that, weakened by cultivation,
had grown more agreeable in florists’ eyes,
petals paler, smaller, more diversified in hue.
An infected bloom, said to be “broken,” added to its allure.
