Ringed in silver gorget, dull eyes misting
In turpentine devoid of warmth
Catching frigid pallor, that sleek whimsy mimesis
Of painter’s careless hand and boredom, dangling
Like a kouros strangled, twisting a
Key iron-housed in broken lock
Barren of secrets and starved of salvation
Is a rhyton emptied long ago
Void of even the grit of rotting parchment sands,
the etching worn, smoothly sad, by the cacophony of time:
He is mute and worth no second look
RED GLADIOLA 