Accomplice

In dusty fields I harvested the vine

And sweated at the lever as the grapes were pressed.

My aching hands still clutched their vagrant wages,

Sleeping in the cold barracks of the dispossessed.

But now at dawn, beyond the reach of reason.

I wake in the chateau between your tangled sheets.

My sunburnt arm across your naked shoulder,

The mute accomplice of our mutual defeat.

Dana Gioia

© 2001; originally printed in The Hudson Review.  Reprinted
by permission of the author.