Thief du Lac
Lewis Hyde
- Thief in the Hotel du Lac!
- Our little pouch of cash--
- pure loss, now, or
- pure plenitude, for
- hardly a month will pass
- I do not spend those bills
- in fantasy--shop window in Verona:
- an oriental rug, the fancy desk lamp
- under which I write hurriedly
- in soft pencil on yellow pads,
- those saxophone lessons
- and the teacher whose family
- slowly moved into our extra
- bedroom, and all that happened
- afterward, the blood, the gold, the babies,
- oh Thief du Lac, true wealth
- is hard to find.
-- July 1991, Bellagio, Italy
