LETTERS OF THE UNLIVING by MINA LOY

The present implies presence
thus
unauthorized by the present
these letters are left authorless --
have lost all origin
since the inscribing hand
lost life.

The harshness of the past
croaks,
from creased leaves
covered with unwritten writing
since death's erasure
of the writer --
erased the lover

Well-chosen and so ill-relinquished
the husband heartsease --
acme of communion --

made euphonious
our esoteric universe.

Ego's oasis now's
the sole companion.

My body and my reason
you left to the drought of your dying:
the longing and the lack
of a racked creature
shouting
to an unanswering hiatus
'reunite us!'

till slyly
patience creeps up on passion
and the elation of youth
dwindles out of season.

Agony
ends in an equal grave
with ecstasy.

An uneasy mist
rises from this calligraphy of recollection
documenting a terror of dementia.

This package of ago
creaks with the horror of echo.

The bloom of love
decoyed
to decay by the finger
of Hazard the swindler --
deathly handler who leaves
no post-mortem mask
but a callous earth.

Posing the extreme enigma
in my Bewilderness
can your face excelling Adonis
have ceased to be
or ever have had existence?

With you no longer the addresser
there is no addressee
to dally with defunct reality.

Can one who still has being
be inexistent?

I am become
dumb
in answer
to your dead language of amor.

Diminuendo
of life's imposture
implies no possible retrial
by my present self --
my cloud-corpse
beshadowing your shroud.

The one I was with you:
inhumed in chasms.
No creator
reconstrues scar-tissue
to shine as birth-star.

But to my sub-cerebral surprise
at last on blase sorrow
dawns an iota of disgust
for life's intemperance:

'As once you were'

Withhold your ghostly reference
to the sweet once were we.

Leave me
my final illiteracy
of memory's languor --

my preference
to drift in lenient coma
an older Ophelia
on Lethe.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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