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IX. Loving Romy Schneider

St John, David

It was a line from Schiller

Set by Schumann, I think, that she wrote

In the flyleaf of the small photo album

Filled entirely with postcards of nudes

Some male & some female-but each

More miraculous (not to mention immortal)

In their marble flesh than we, who, of course,

Exhausted & sleepless & spent, collapsed into

That coma of the loved & wounded, or vice versa.

Of all the nudes, I preferred the Rodins,

Those postcards being a little grainy & indistinct,

Sort of how I think of myself in the early morning.

Then I put the Schumann on my ancient, almost antique

Turntable, & the whole of my fate revolves slowly

Into some kind of brutal focus, at last.