Habit's Rabbet

Habit’s Rabbet

And why unblooms the best hope has ever sown?

--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....

These purblind doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

                                                            Hap

                                                            Thomas Hardy

Memory wears a black suit

and shores and up in the dark

when the feast is long done

and the poorer bones are picked

and licked and cracked

and licked memory takes

off her coat and shoes

and casts them across the sooty arm 

chari and floor, pocket side up, shine

of the bootblack handkerchief all

dull in the glut of frey.  The pocket’s 

the only door in the room.

And it’s this that has to open,

bring out the trinkets, although by

the end of the night they'll be 

scattered and memory will be naked

in your bed and you will have

fucked her or she

will have fucked you, or,

if you’re both on speaking terms

tonight, taken your time with

the whole thing

and started where you got

off last night.