In the year after our life ended,
When you put a gun to your head,
In the year that my eyes turned to glass,
That my heart turned to iron,
Only my hands remained human.
They seized the axe for firewood,
The hoe to loosen hard soil,
The knife to prepare the evening meal,
The shears to cut flowers, beauty
Indifferent to its own decay.
Only my hands continued human,
Writing red on student themes,
Writing black on the white pages
Of emptiness. The only tears were black,
The cries were only lines joined to lines.
My shaping hands held up this semblance
Of structure, pulse, and picture
To my eyes of glass, my iron heart.
Dazed Galatea of my own poems
I stepped down from death.