The Way You Lose

One more example of the way you lose
Is how you always seem to look at me
As if my pants were ripped below the knee
The way they were when I was nine. Confuse
Me with a child, insist I have to choose
Between your love and the Aegean Sea,
No more now than an azure memory
Of someone's mythological first cruise.

I don't see Theseus up on the cliff
Where once I saw his royal helmet shine
In sunlight just the colour of Greek wine,
Considering his father, tall and stiff
Against the sky, thinking What if — What if —
And mournfully discerning the wrong sign.