Coda

This collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere. They are largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his apartment in uptown Manhattan.

"Proposition"

When we’re old lovers, sitting in separate chairs

Silently, will you think our love has faded

Though we smile richly and are still unaided

By doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs?

Though talk has frozen in geologic layers

Of long alignment of the loved and hated

And even our sexuality is jaded

And we have settled all our private cares

Including death, listen to me, adored,

Words cannot fail us ever, no matter how

The fates brighten their implements to prove

That even gods and geniuses get bored

With marriage, fucking and poetic love,

Because, beloved, we call each other thou.