by Stephen Dunn

Because in my family the heart goes first
and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties,
I think I’ll stay up late with a few bandits
of my choice and resist good advice.
I’ll invent a secret scroll lost by Egyptians
and reveal its contents: the directions
to your house, recipes for forgiveness.
History says my ventricles are stone alleys,
my heart itself a city with a terrorist
holed up in the mayor’s office.
I’m in the mood to punctuate
only with the maker of promises, the colon:
next, next, next, it says, God bless it.
As García Lorca may have written: some people
forget to live as if a great arsenic lobster
could fall on their heads at any moment.
My sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.
Come, play poker with me,
I want to be taken to the cleaners.
I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent.  As for me, I’ll share
my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch.
It’s time to give up the search for the invisible.
On the best of days there’s little more
than the faintest intimations.  The millennium,
my dear, is sure to disappoint us.
I think I’ll keep on describing things
to ensure that they really happened.

—from Different Hours: Poems