God knows it has been centuries 
Since I last heard 
The keen, ecstatic trumpet of your voice. 
Ages since I last knew 
The wistful softness of your mouth on mine. 
(Ah God! Warm mouths that clung and searched!) 
Your poised triumphant fingertips 
That traced erotic ecstacies 
Through the heated amber hollows ... 

Curious that time. 
The stately cadence of the days and hours and centuries. 
Should be so wholly you - 
Days that moved in an avalanche 
Of crashing, colorful emotion 
Have become rhythmic, pendulemated 
Grey hammers on my soul. 
Hours once etched 
With the gold tracery of your laughter 
Are pallid indecencies 
That cling and will not go. 

All things are dead now you have gone. 
The lean cats of squalor 
Run patterns beneath my feet. 
It is not just that I 
Who have lived emotion 
Should have it stifled 
By the slim white hands I so adore 
And cannot forget. 
Better the agonies 
Of your swift, dear fingertips 
Playing raptly, certainly 
On the raw nerve keys of my soul 
Than - nothing. 

Have you forgotten - 
Have your forgotten - 
The body's heat beneath the palm. 
The mouth that kissed 
Each cool, delightful fingertip 
The while they traced 
Each tear and tear and sun and You-cut wrinkle 
On the face beneath - 
Have you forgotten 

Write here an epitaph!

He diced the Fates 
And, having lost 
He could not laugh 
But took his heart, annealed 
Through close association with a dream. 
And broke it. 

And watched the thin, scincillating scarlet dust 
Float slowly down 
Beneath one inch of pine 
Beneath a cotton flag 
He lies alone, 
The mad, tired mind at rest 
Of the strident bugle 
Echoed the laughter of those 
With whom he diced. 

         TenEyck Van Deusen