They called the poet a fool for running to Italy

on the day he broke a thousand hearts,

yet even as the last maiden cried out in a mournful

repose and beat her now discarded breasts,

her long fingernails

biting deep down under that velvet, ivory white skin

and drawing blood that eventually found its way

to the oblivion of the dusty floor, licked clean by mites

and the might not haves running through her brain,

the fool, the poet and the madman all

became as one.