Tiara at 24

I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,


where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments


of the music we die into
in the body's paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing


how we came to lie here, 
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given






the world's perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk


of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form


and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it?









Mark Doty
Tiara
  [final fragment]
  Turtle, Swan
1987
Fire to Fire
  New and selected poems
Harper Collins, 2008©


William D. Walsh photography