On Not Wanting It to Kill You Soon

https://youtu.be/3QzwMnKJFWw

.

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?

.