poem for bruce

Under the roof is the empty room papered in requiem blue. Partiers crowd the burned kitchen, gold fixtures hook to cheap lath. What is it they can tell you about absence how it abates, takes names Becomes a wall with windows faced on a formal garden, content To accept the thin rain. The syllable forgives the words that need it, a sentence Badly written, epigraphs scrawled thoughtlessly in books. Book where the hero confronts a dark riddle, book where the suitors stand at the gate and are stumped. What force brought them forward stooping at the lintel, up the chipped steps To the blue door in the unbuilt tower, half-built, the new stone.