How can you know you’ve survived?
The hands still move, the feet, the heart though the mouth is frozen shut.
I am taking the groceries out from the bag. I am putting the dishes
Into the sink. I am sweeping under
The table, and the tree outside, with its bare braches, sways gently in the wind.
The children come in, throw their bags on the floor,
And there is much noise in the empty room in the empty house in the empty space
Of the head where I do not want to go. Days pass. Years.
Happiness. Spring. The river washes up and over the shore and the geese,
When I approach, hiss at me.
The gods, at the end of the play, speak through the oracle
Who warns never to call a man happy until the end of his life.
End of time, I say, the sky so blue today
It holds everything at once.