Wilde’s Tomb

But these, thy lovers are not dead.…They will rise up and hear your voice. . .. and run to kiss your mouth.
–The Sphinx

In the garden of Père Lachaise,

city of the dead, we passed angels

covering their faces in shame,

& nineteenth-century trees, with tops bowed

as if their only purpose was to grieve,

& crossed the Transversales to Wilde’s grave.

When lovers leave, they leave their kisses

glistening on the gray slab,

on impressions of lips themselves,

a tissue of strangers’ cells

the conservators cannot leave alone,

& scrub the graffiti, as the plaque decrees

by law, no one can deface this tomb,

& still the images of lips remain,

dark gray stains of animal fat

imprisoned in limestone.

Lips are pressed as high as lovers

climb, against the Sphinx’s ridiculous

headdress, on the carved trumpet

of fame, & on the cheeks of its voracious face

of mindless passion flying with eyes pinched tight,

that some farsighted lover tried to open

with lines from a red pen, like a blepharoplasty,

while others kissed its sybaritic mouth

to make a poem a prophecy.

So here is love alive

surviving the wreckage it survives,

a lipstick envelope of hearts on their flight

to some other place, less aware,

more receiving, a final Champ de Grâce.

Source: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2016)