I, as sinned against as sinning, take small pleasure from the winning of our decades-long guerrilla war. For from my job I’ve wanted more than victory over one who’d tried to punish me before they died, and now, neither of us dead, we haunt these halls in constant dread of drifting past the others life while long-term memory is rife with slights that sting like paper cuts. We’ve occupied our separate ruts yet simmered in a single rage. We’ll grow absurd in middle age and should now seek wisdom together, by ending this row.
I therefore decommission you as constant flagship of my rue. Below the threshold of my hate
of you now my good regard may rate. For I have let my anger pass. But, while you’re down there, kiss my ass.
You have turned your back on Eden
And shut the garden gates
And trampled away through the bracken
To where your future waits
And the apple lies where you let it fall
And the serpent laughs at you from over the wall.
But perhaps, as you write by your window
On a day of tender spring
You will stop your work for a moment
To hear a blackbird sing
And will catch an echo, soft and clear,
Of faraway music you cannot hear.
Was there ever a quiet garden where the golden apples hung?
Where I walked with my love in the morning of the world when we both were young?
And the serpent shone with an oily gleam?
Or was it only the dream of a dream?