Old sack  
that even now costs less  
than a good bistecca,  

how simply you betray me.

Like a drinking fountain  
running night and day
on a slab of diminishing travertine

as Flora bends to you
with her vase or Neptune washes the scales  
from his hands, never stopping  

to think that like that whore, Perfica,
who after a good night’s
work, straddles you like a dolphin,

you can’t keep this up for ever.  

One day your recklessness will sever
us, and as you fall  
toward Orcus, so I will fall

as words from another’s
lips, in other mouths  
moving, other lips and tongues  

around me now singing
the taste of me, the heft and clear sound.