Des Esseintes' Last Book

       after Huysmans

It was red, which pleased him. Small
and hard, it fit in his palm
as if it loved him and was listening
to the strange, murmurous thumps
of his ambivalent heart. How sleekly
the pages brushed his skin, like sunlight
after a late afternoon bathe, when
suddenly the world is believable
and for an instant he does not want to die.
Yet the empty shelves still sing to him, those slim
alabaster brides, calling him in
from the garden, raising a glass of light.
Through the brambles, one breaks out onto
a rock-cut stair down to the sea.