I have loved an aristocrat above avenues
humming with revolution,
sported with daughters of the sun and moon
by forest, by ocean,
and sighed with a passionate adulteress
in a rose garden.
I have disputed with intellectuals
in the Parthenon,
legislated for a great city
when the regime began.
I have read my poems to my darling
beside a broad river,
and talked into the night under the stars
in the summer weather,
and I have been happy ever after
married to my lover.
All this – and at your wake, Richard,
I cried for me and cried for you -
reminded of all we haven’t done
and all that we will never do.