RE-WRITING CAMILLE

"To pray, Jesus knew, is to be a man carrying a man."
--Anne Sexton

Why must my deepest feelings be rooted
to tragedy: somebody dying too soon, too soon?
I have a persistent cough, a small cold & it's not a
death rattle, not

In old movies, books, the classics, heroes/heroines
are often done away with.
Kaput. That sums up the plot. Juliet & Romeo.
Heathcliff & Catherine.
The driven, the driven mad, killed despite the
important roles
of maids, couriers, cooks

Is it the same in our reality with just a change in
costumes, in disease, backdrops?
If so,
I'm going to re-write this. I'm going to let Camille
live.
She wants to desperately. She wants to forget the
baron, stay in the country with her Amore
& be reborn among sheep herds, bee passages, the
reflections of ponds.
What, who could it hurt
if they were to be poor, but happy?
Let them grow fat, get wrinkles, repeat stories, get
in each other's hair.
Let's edit interfering society, family, all the petty
talk of mores, of normal life--

Camille's real fears, her brass cynicism, her head
thrown back in a laughter that looks like pain--
& her suitor's jealousy, his young pup sentiments...
suddenly blending in a balance
of equal strength & stronger, for they will have
weathered,
they will have won
the difficulty of answered prayers.

It will be a new age: hearts, spirits making
themselves--
jewelry hocked, possessions kept simple, jeans worn,
anything, even nothing, worn,
& heads not lowered if the world spits--

will the world spit, in the city, in the fields?
No. Only people &, I confess, it's not quite Camille,
that queen's angel, I breathe, but you,
man carrying a man to be carried & stand -- is that
too selfish--cough, cough -- before we lie down.

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