Coda: Last Poems

This collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere. They are largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his apartment in uptown Manhattan.

"Proposition"
When we're old lovers, sitting in separate chairs
Silently, will you think our love has faded
Though we smile richly and are still unaided
By doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs?
Though talk has frozen in geologic layers
Of long alignment of the loved and hated
And even our sexuality is jaded
And we have settled all our private cares

Including death, listen to me, adored,
Words cannot fail us ever, no matter how
The fates brighten their implements to prove
That even gods and geniuses get bored
With marriage, fucking and poetic love,
Because, beloved, we call each other thou.