1
Last
night, like a new cause, my death began.
I
met the past, the days ahead without me.
Began
as I stalked through the pass of love.
I
saw my leaving. Not as it once was: hook!
Hook
was that parting from another love
when
I made the day’s deeds medallions.
‘Fish
do not feel,’ that other love had said.
Fish-flesh
a bag; hook-wrench; drift-light at sea.
2
My
first love made my mind a trap for fear.
Last
night I had no fear. I said, ‘I die.’
My
first love taught me: look, the end of us
is
pain, a tearing. Love me. Nothingness.
But
nothing is, my love last night told me,
mere
hole between the worlds that we define.
Feel
round those holes, feel elbow-deep round them.
My
time was up: I touched the worlds around.
Eating
my bread in secret, I communed
with
weak-back men, slack women of the plain;
with
Macedonian bloods like lekking cocks,
louche
orgies, wars and work, the sea around.
3
Such
things the bedside light told, and I looked
down
at a heap of dank and squeaking bones,
breasts
and abdomen, that are now so neat,
I
saw pushed to one side, chewed chicken, gone.
I
paddled in the going, while I held
the
unrecognisable other from the tomb.
I
saw her future with no jealousy.
I
felt my death begin. I had begun.
