Dead Man, Thinking

i.
    Snow geese in the light of morning sky, 
exactly at the start of spring.  I was 
    looking through the cracks of the blinds at my future which seemed 
absent of parades, for which I was grateful, 
    and only yesterday

                
I watched what an April wind could do 
    to a body wrapped in silk, 
though I turned my eyes away, 
    the way the teacher says, 
once the beauty was revealed.  

ii
How long it takes to die, in the fifty-fifth year
    is what I thought about today.  
I told some truths so large, no one could bear to hear them.  
    I bow down to those who could not hear the truth.  
They could not hear the truth because they were afraid 
    that it would open a veil into nothing.  
I bow down to that nothing.  I bow down to a single red planet 
    I saw in the other world’s sky, 
spinning, 
    as if towards some
fleshy inevitability.  

    I bow down to the red planet. I bow down 
to the noisy birds, indigenous to this region. 
    Only sorrow can bend you in half 
    like you’ve seen on those whose loves have gone away. 
I bow down to those loves.