The flowers that I left in the ground,<br /> that I did not gather for you,<br /> today I bring them all back,<br /> to let them grow forever,<br /> not in poems or marble,<br /> but where they fell and rotted.<br /><br /> And the ships in their great stalls,<br /> huge and transitory as heroes,<br /> ships I could not captain,<br /> today I bring them back<br /> to let them sail forever,<br /> not in model or ballad,<br /> but where they were wrecked and scuttled.<br /><br /> And the child on whose shoulders I stand,<br /> whose longing I purged<br /> with public, kingly discipline,<br /> today I bring him back<br /> to languish forever,<br /> not in confession or biography,<br /> but where he flourished,<br /> growing sly and hairy.<br /><br /> It is not malice that draws me away,<br /> draws me to renunciation, betrayal:<br /> it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee,<br /> Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon-<br /> I have become the expert of the catalogue.<br /><br /> My body once so familiar with glory,<br /> My body has become a museum:<br /> this part remembered because of someone's mouth,<br /> this because of a hand,<br /> this of wetness, this of heat.<br /><br /> Who owns anything he has not made?<br /> With your beauty I am as uninvolved<br /> as with horses' manes and waterfalls.<br /> This is my last catalogue.<br /> I breathe the breathless<br /> I love you, I love you -<br /> and let you move forever.