Still Valentine

In the monastery of old age
where one is cloistered hard
by blindness and stiff rage
in the monastery of the mind
where one remains celibate
to all but one idea
in the monastery of embrace
where one returns to the medieval
sources of harmony and order
in the garden of the monkish mind
locked away as we are in the skull
of each individual cell
even after all the dark woods
we’ve been through there’s still
something inviolate about humankind