Cosmo Adair

Love rots away in the footnotes

Of the heart’s biography — 

A musty, damp-eaten, hardback book

In an obsolete library — 

Time sits by, with an abject hand

Fingering a quarter-to-three — 

The ceiling doesn’t brighten now 

And my eyes can’t shut or see —

The Moon is at its climax now — 

And sad Pierrot thinks he sees

Lips in the starscape — the arresting

Water ripples in the breeze — 

The water (that Great Rememberer

Of things it’s heard so much before), 

Knows there’s one kind, abstract solace

And tempts him to the shore — 

The water ripples; paint dissolves

From his quaint and guileless face — 

Oh, what can moon-bitten lovers do

But tear at life’s anfractuous lace.