The Lies of Navarone

He told her he loved her for her mind,
he was sure she wasn’t aware
that Lowell had said, “the mind is also flesh”.

How had the empire been lost,
Spanish criminal or criminal Christ?
Obscured by La Malinche’s volcano, El Popo?

He could not bring himself to tell her
that her waist was smaller
than Emily Dickinson’s.

A brain-cell does not divide a person,
gray matter in solitary confinement,
only the earth to roam!

Nobody blamed him for being Delmore Schwartz,
happy to hibernate
and somber.

In the end, the mouth of truth
is off on a Roman holiday
and Gregory Peck keeps lying his ass off.