After the Fall

It’s always the same story—boy loves girl.
Or some variation with a dog in winter, a street carnival,
and someother something that syntactically parallels

Paracelsus and it is too much but What's here?
A cup, clos'd in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.

The organ grinder’s lost
monkey tips his hat, the coins
clink, he stares and cries. The dog again

wags its woeful tail and wants for water.
Then, too many too many words later
a tune heard twice too much:

a lost monkey dancing on a park bench,
a half empty water glass
on a cafe table in the fall.

From “Liner Notes.”