she has outlived the poet’s death throes

gone past the lines of offensive defense

dead, he is

on his headstone, don’t try

pilgrimage may be before she dies

she still living among the relentless

breathing she is

still dying to know how it ends.

 

 

nyc 9.30.2021

JOURNAL ENTRIES…

10 Sept. 1976

Yesterday I went to see a dying uncle and a cruelly hopeful aunt. She still believes she will take him home. He is already transformed into that kind of body death creates—as a last final insult—The boy in the next bed, 20 years old – muscular dystrophy – collapsed lung – a father who took his huge deformed hand and kissed it. I could not take my eyes away and was afraid of being thought rude. But they did not know that I was there at all. —

In the midst of all this pain and ugly dying my aunt caught sight of my cut fingers and shuddered. She couldn’t look at wounds like that, she said