What Shall I Do?

What shall I do,
what shall I do
since now some other man has to himself
the woman I once made alive,
now has her low accented whisperings against his ear,
now knows her rests, her quiet times,
her work bound risings early in the day,
her cherishings,
knows now the snow curve of her shoulders
and her neck,
the way they taste like nothing else
within the world,
and how she, sultry,
tilts her head, and raises up her chin into a dare,
and gives her sly and knowing smile
before she opens for a kiss?

What shall I do within this now --
this now
in which he gets, not I,
to have her in his bed,
to rove his hands along her flesh
that once was frenzied by my touch,
to hear the voice that I made often inarticulate
and keening late at night
across the miles;
to feel the tensing I, in April and in Summered months,
once brought into her arms,
her hands,
her thighs,
as passion coiled her up into abandonment,
to see the sheening and the hard desire
inside her eyes
the rush of longing undisguised
that I saw, all amazed,
when she first knew she wanted me?

Oh I shall sit still at my desk, in my dark chair,
I shall be stilled, caught up in immobility.
I shall clamp down for a little while
upon my breath
to make its ins and outs a studied measuring.
against futility.
I shall stare ahead for empty moments,
moments later unaccounted for,
at some vague spot
along my wall,
at nothing in particular,
at  dim unfocused light,
and I shall shake my head at how I know
that I’ll not sleep again except in fits and starts
for a useless night or two or three
and so within the coming weeks how tired
and mired in memory I’ll be, constrained, confined.
And when I’m free of being numb, I guess I’ll write.