A Visitor at Breakfast

An organization of the flesh,

Gold and white and ribald red,

Fantastic as a Hindu queen,

Partakes of breakfast in her bed.

No doubt an organization of the mind

Accounts for laughter and the shrill

Monopoly of verbal sounds

Which billow to the window sill.

The courtiers who with servile steps

Are Tom and Sue, the serving maid,

Are organized to find in her

The beauty of the proud, obeyed.

But I who come the visitor

Intruding into Fragonard,

Have on my clothes the odor of

The stone and brick within the yard. j

And stone and brick perhaps is why

I feel a darkness in this room,

And know her as the Queen of Death

Who weaves our sadness on her loom.