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Lightsey Darst
Don't
A worthwhile life? Finding the names of the dead. You
may leave me—I let you—and go to Hungary, Russia, those
mass graves. It's so hard (say the newsboys) to keep
snow from a newborn baby or a corpse. That eye
open & flecked with hexagons—falling desert of white
above the tree line. And then a lake whose ice skin
apes silk on the back of a princess.
Slowly the smile of skulls grows bearable, even sweet. Dream how,
if we burned in one room, how deeply we might
love before the tallow. Unlike a room of snow.
All these prisoners in me as we circle the frozen lake. Teeth
that will not bite. Is it sky, or cotton batting
hung up to prevent bruising? Lack of silk. Oh you are gone.
But I am already here. It is the country that stays.
By the way, summer came for good today
ticking its fat death watch.
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