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At Sixty
I have pried up, brushed off the self in me that hugged secrets—the griever, the night walker, the peeping-tom who promised to reform, thumbing through porn all day. Acknowledge all his lapses, his intensity. Never fault him for feeling: fault him for what he endangered: creeping into beds so sweet that he could not recall the breathing. He bubbled promises to keep his lovers deaf to the lofty inflections of a desire that had no mind to remember what it had sworn, or whom it had been sworn to, or when. Could he expect to anticipate the lurches of his guilt? Well, things have changed for the good. The world looks clear. That self has bleached: his harshest needs are gone. Yet sometimes at the drawing in of day when I am too beaten down to lift a spoon I taste the sharp pepper of his cruelty.