HOMAGE TO SAMUEL BECKETT

There is a heaviness inside the body

                                        that leans down, but does not touch us.

There is a lassitude that licks itself, but brings no relief.

There is a self-destructiveness no memory can repeal.

Such breath in the unstopped ear,

                                        such sweet breath, O, along the tongue.

Cloud swatches brilliance the sky

Over the Alleghenies,

                                        unpatterned as Heaven.

Across the street, Amoret’s family picnic has ended.

Memorial Day,

                            the dead like plastic bags in the blown trees.

In Paradise, springtime never arrives.

                                                                  The seasons

Are silent, and dumb, and ghost-walk outside our windows.

And so it is down here—

                                             we grovel on our extremities

And rise, rise up, halfway to where the new leaves begin.

And thus, unexpectedly, a small rain commences,

Then backs off.

                            The sunlight continues its dying fall.

And dying, one hopes to think, will be such a slide, a mild jolt,

Like shifting from formlessness to form.