All but Death can be

Adjusted ;

Dynasties repaired,

Systems settled in their

Sockets,

Centuries removed, —

Wastes of lives resown

With colors

By superior springs,

Death — unto itself exception —

Is exempt from change.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Stars and people and daffodils won’t last forever.
Hands down, forever will succumb to a single sensation,
one last heaven, one last shudder     
lost voice carried over the winds of the body, the canyons
of the hands in a shower, snow or warm? Last ashes
of satisfaction dance above an open mouth, teeth like light
in an emptied room, the wet music of the tongue.
Somebody will find the edge to all of humanity’s joy, a flood,
a punctuation will flood her with its certainty,
or them, or us, all at once, and that lonely breach
will ripple through, on and out, with indefatigable atoms.
Those asking hands never to slow their speeding ship     
one last starry daffodil excess will blow its soft dunes,
that lost voice, back, over everything that ever came
before. Until emptied out. And if you slow, if you slowly reach
across your own body until you feel it, too, even now?
You can come to an end, even now. It lasts, wanting to.