one bowl

(Image by George Desipris)

I lied to you

and kept back one bowl,

a gleaming one,

ancient enamel.

The rim is drawn

in kufic cursive,

the colour dark

burgundy, leaded.

The lines, to me,

speak as they want to--

I cannot read

them, nor they themselves--

open, then, but

not vacant for the

mind takes, on them,

reifying turns.

I kept it back

as a heritage

and I held it

after you were here,

and I loved it

as a kind of a

sanity, or

enclosure in red.

But there, then, take

it and smelter the

thing, let me be,

those are the rules now;

though have my thanks

for a moment more--

it's well to be

the last thing to go.