ONE OF MY FEW LOVE POEMS

for Amy Short

When your beauty fades,
my lady,
stones will feel it; traffic-lights
will give out
double messages;
priests will kick in
stained-glass windows;
circumcisions
will knit---
but I’ll calmly tell ya
that you were always ugly
in the part
that matters
least.


Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 1978