Perhaps the fact of death would seem less strange
if out my bedroom window and below
there were a family graveyard in the snow
where those like me who have gone before change
only by familiar yards the arrangement
of their sleep; if my own place I could know
below such white, specific, well-known snow,
perhaps my death would seem a mere exchange.
But here in the city death has no place—
like drifting smoke it’s exiled to the air,
long aloft before it breaks into space,
tossed with rain and exhaust, thin as despair;
here, since death appears and leaves us no trace,
I’m afraid to go without knowing where.