Backdoor

My door opens, cracked, a creak...
the longed-for sounds of years and years ago

but now, today, you break and enter,
wanted not,
an occurrence of my memory
through that backdoor left unbarred.

A room
empty of sound

all our journeys sung, all sold away
on stretched and queerly colored canvases:

on one your star coat plunges, shot-out, black, unknown;
another: melted see-through ruby clock
         suspended over space;

then the Kansas green tornado sky
you once spoke of

and last, my dream attendant’s
vacant cheerless face,
washed and wrung each sleepless day to dry.

Please go.
Go unadorned by sympathy, by art. Go
loudly now
through that backdoor left cracked open.

A room
empty of sound

locked and barred anew at your departure.