Elegy

◾ after Franz Wright

The first time I try to step off a ledge I couldn’t step off the ledge.

I was quiet, but I was young, and so I feared God.

I told everyone, when I wrote the note I was thinking of sand.

I told everyone, when I wrote the note it was sand.

They didn’t become angry. They didn’t become afraid.

They told me to listen to the banyans, and I did.

I became an uneven, parasitic light.

I adopted the uncertainty of evening, I felt everything under my feet.

They told me to put on the celebratory hat of prosperity; at this, I was happy.

This was the year I understood my life and in it, the significance of horns.

There is a young dog on the beach who stays on the lip of the shore.

He/she is very small and laps excitedly much salt. He/she is dying more than ever.

This is that, I tell everyone.

In my dreams I enter into the unknown hand.

My body is blue in the light and shining.

My body is clean.

Towards the end of my life lies only the end of my life.