(source: Open Culture)

Since you asked me most days I cannot remember
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by the voyage.
Then almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well that grass blades you mentioned,
The furniture you have placed under the sun.

But Suicides have specail launguage.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools,
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
Have possession of the enmy, eaten the enmy,
Have taken on his craft, his music.

In this way, hear thoughtful
Warmer than oil or water
I have rested, drooling at the mouthhole.

I do not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born they don’t always die,
But dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
That even children would look on and smile.

To Trust all that life under your tongue!
That, all by itself, becomes a passion
Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say

And yet after she waits for me. Year after Year.
To so delicately undo an old wound,
To empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
Raging at the fruit, a pumped up moon,
Leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

Leaving the page of the book carelessly open
Something unsaid, the phone off the hook
And the love, whatever it was, an infection.

(1967)