The Agony of Orchids

by Brett Rutherford

What can they mean to you,

this line of courtiers?

Why do they come and go
as though they had keys
of their own to your dwelling?

Do they not blush when they pass
one another in the stairwell?

So much simpler, so free
of collisions is our pact
of mutual avoidance!

There floats another
in the nearby lagoon;
I hear tell of a self-hanging.

I leave to them the horror
of loving you

(they warm you
against the night-black chill
that is our greater love);

to them, the pain
of your gay dismissal,

to them,  the anguish
     of your pearly laugh,

the agony of orchids
     you cultivate
     to bloom from suicides;

I leave to them

     the only fit reward

     for loving you —

a Carnival death,
knives drawn
     by unknown strangers
all with the same face,
identical daggers
thrust from gloved hands
in a whirl of black dominos.

I watch, I count,
I bide my time.

—1968/1979/19985, rev 2020