So, Love, when that celebrated clarifier,
Chemotherapy, calls back—for us,
this time, with his white, apologetic smile,
his porcelain saucers of carbolic acid and lye,
his banker’s insistence on reality-based accounting,
well, we’ll want these chances back. The canting
hours, the fund of unkisses, the mind, unMidas-
like, immodest ever in miniature amidst
the molten metals of the morning, his brazing-iron
of petty anger held against the pure ore
of the already-gold world.