the widower on the roof

the widower on the roof

was what the bitchy boys called him:
it was fun to hear their laughs.

he was terrified of typhoid, it was true,
and kept his distance from a lover
alone on a death bed, who would
soon die with no one by his side.

but Cocteau held no illusions about being brave
and fled!

by being in Monte Carlo, he missed the funeral
which was talked about later as being
a service en blanc: white eyes seeing everything
in white, including the white horses hired to pull the hearse.

the young man who died was a poet, poetically speaking.

his sorrowing fans followed the horses in a freezing rain.

wet and cold behind the black band they moved

to their lively music,

all the way to the white cemetery
where white flowers
were piled neatly upon a white coffin
placed carefully next to a freshly-dug white hole.