Flame
The real Griselda
Has a hair trigger
And a perfect figure.
She burns like a shaped charge
Through your armor,
Your universal human
Inevitable falsity
That wants to ossify
Into a gray plate
Of lies. Everything
Cheap, false or impure
That scabs up on your skin
Is cleaned up with the torch—
At the price of God’s pain,
Symmetric as mace.
She never starts it
And always finishes it.
Her straight male friends
Are like her gay friends.
A wife can be a servant,
A colleague, an escort—
Greatness runs in each—
The greatest is the surgeon,
Who plays her nerveless knife,
All blade and no handle,
With the painter’s tense joy
To mutually purify.