ALT Dear Francis, for Francis Bacon (1909-1992) I’m sorry no one told you you do not have to wake in tatters, pulling bits of window from your eye. Curse every man who doesn’t know what it takes to be tender, to surrender the whip and open the fist to favor the dexterous brush of horsehair across corkboard. Those old stables are empty now, no boys’ boots to tongue-polish, nothing to muck except memory. Where your father cracked the riding crop over your scalp, you try to staunch the bleeding with lace shreds from your mother’s dress. Booze won’t do it, cadmium or crucifixion won’t wring the want from your skin. There’s still the farrier’s hammer in your father’s hand, the impasto of blood, the tint of bone, your mouth torn into a howl. How hard it is to turn from cruelty.