courthouse steps

to say no more of art than that it makes, by its very distraction

                     a mode of abiding

accordingly, its variations:    each type of thread-and-piecework

                     named double engagement ring, log cabin, or broken dishes   

all built on the same geometric figures—

                                        precise interception of angle and line

so too each tale of love is rooted in that first tale:    the poet

                     descending to the underworld

                                        finally granted his shade, who'll follow him

only to disappear again.      perhaps one version has them reunite

                     affixed in their solo chromospheres the stars, which,

to the human eye, appear to overlap

substanceless love

                                        immune at last to gravity and time—

in texas (I might as well recount this as a story) there's a town

                     with a courthouse built on concrete and twisted iron

edified in red granite, capitals & architrave of red sandstone

with point and punch, a carver broached the effigy of his muse

                     he rendered her attractive features, down to the very blush

                                          of course she spurned him,

                  of course there was another to whom she turned

love should not be written in stone but written in water

                                        (I paraphrase the latin of catullus)

the sculptor carried on:    not just the face of his beloved

                     but the face of her other lover:

                                        snaggle-toothed, wart-peppered, pudgy

them both, made into ugly caricatures of themselves, as wanton

                     as the carver perceived them, and as lewd

                     well, craze and degenerate and crack:   the portraits hold

though, long since, the participants have dwindled into dirt

         

                     beautiful.      unbeautiful.      each with an aspect of exactness

tread light upon this pedestal.      dream instead of a time before

                     your love disfigured, a time

                                        withstanding even crass, wind-beaten time itself