Flowering Death

        Ahead, starting from the far north, it wanders.
	Its radish-strong gasoline fumes have probably been
	Locked into your sinuses while you were away.
	You will have to deliver it.
	The flowers exist on the edge of breath, loose,
	Having been laid there.
	One gives pause to the other,
	Or there will be a symmetry about their movements
	Through which each is also an individual.
	 
        It is their collective blankness, however,
	That betrays the notion of a thing not to be destroyed.
	In this, how many facts we have fallen through
	And still the old façade glimmers there,
	A mirage, but permanent.  We must first trick the idea
	Into being, then dismantle it,
	Scattering the pieces on the wind,
	So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship,
	Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night
	Whose ruse gave it our final meaning.