THE WATER-CRUMBS

White sink, the wet cloth spread,
the drying dishes racked:
ours; left by us, intact, 
for talk or book or bed.
Stay pure for me . . . Instead,
into that shriven tract
the midnight spider comes
to suck the water-crumbs.

Hispid and sepia strays
that loose eight-fingered hand
upon the porcelain; and
groping down candid glaze
finds chastity betrays:
slips, and is deodand
for the impertinence
of spoiling innocence.

How often can we know
we have been fingered by
a darkly-pubic sly
intruder who must go
deflowering to-and-fro
and, upon cleanness, die?
Nightlong? Daylong? And may
that corpse be washed away?