How natural,
to be in pain,
you unoriginal punk
Oblivious to flowers
good parking
and teenage girlfriends
how sad can you be?
With your hollowness.
You’ve got teeth
And hair and dreams
And you squander them
With a slouching spirit?
You fool,
you’ll be old and bent
before your misery fades
what a waste.
Vile, witch-brained scum
find your own damn ride home
matter meandering rut
existing somewhere on
the edge of consciousness
lingering on cracks because
bad luck might do me good
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
– Louise Gluck
