Into Silence
(“May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to beginall over again.”) Colette, The Pure and the Impure
A quiet end, surrounded by her books
a bowl of stone fruit, the invisible last cat.
Night’s ease, the folding of some well-wisher’s blooms
branches outside the window: her lost mother’s whisk
sweeping a patch of ground with tentative flicks.
Rain had left deep puddles around her raft;
streetlight sank into them, briefly oiled, was subsumed
under the eyelids. This was the thing
for which no metaphor, the dark mare or dead end sufficed
but it held no interest for her anyway
who loved only quickening, onion shoots breaking soil
generations of barn kittens suckling milk
the messy gist of a broken egg, even a burst of fire
acrid leaves re-papering sky from orange to char.
The commotion of becoming, flesh or dawn
integuments of that necessary artifice
around a slow ripening: if one loves death too well
then what a waste, a pallid tongue stripped of buds.