Wednesday, April 15, 2020

On Not Wanting It to Kill You Soon



.
When you love a god completely
you are prey to rabid bliss: bless’d
in that inordinately gratifying sense
of cruelty which haunts the root

of “bless” – to wound. Too soon
you’ll face the prospect of departure:
anyway, what seems departure
from the point of view of life:
.
that cliff of death you must imagine
from the scattered evidence will
sever you inevitably from the city’s
early Spring and its resistances
.
and grim delights; that battening
down hatches will eventually
snatch you from Manhattan must,
you have to think, be undergone.
.
Undertaking all the amplitudes of
this renowned dark town before
the undertaker takes his cue –
disposes of the residue of you –
.
is all you’ve got to do. Can you
say the thing outright? You crave
existence in Manhattan more
than photosynthesis craves light.
.
So will it kill you soon? You pray
to it to have some pity – put in a bid
to live beyond this coming May: go on
from here into the coming year to see
.
the seventh day of May in Twenty-
twenty-one. Can that be done?
To be alive to hear the reveille upon
the day that you’d be seventy?
.