Coda

This collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere.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 chairsSilently, will you think our love has fadedThough we smile richly and are still unaidedBy doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs?Though talk has frozen in geologic layersOf long alignment of the loved and hatedAnd even our sexuality is jadedAnd we have settled all our private caresIncluding death, listen to me, adored,Words cannot fail us ever, no matter howThe fates brighten their implements to proveThat even gods and geniuses get boredWith marriage, fucking and poetic love,Because, beloved, we call each other thou.