Trillium undulatumPainted lady, late riser,you rush out of the ground,get pollinated on the flysometimes beforeyour petals fully open,so that within one dayafter emergence they arealready turning translucent,your pink makeup fadingas the light-floodedforest dims to leaf-out.But that’s your trueelement, isn’t it?The shade.Even unpollinated
Let him continuein the ground, hewho is now dead,where all things hurry—a strange companywho seem to speak.Let the pursers and clerksmake up their accounts,the parson rest, andthe great night cometo sit with night.
On a maple’s pale bark,a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marksfrom a wandering snail?Green islands of mossbeckon across a fluttering seaof brown leaves.This cloud-filtered sunlightis perfect, says the photographeras her cheeks slowly turn red.
Take a hold nowOn the silver handles here,Six silver handles,One for each of his old pals.Take holdAnd lift him down the stairs.Put him on the rollersOver the floor of the hearse.Take him on the last haul,To the cold straight house.The level even house,To the last house of all.The dead say nothingAnd the dead know muchAnd the dead hold under their tonguesA locked-up story.
I am not the black cat.There were four of us;my grandmother,a black cat,a myth,and I.My grandmother oftentold us a myth.When you are ill, she said,if a black catcomes and sits on your bedit means that youwill die soon.I was only six,seriously ill.Our black cat
He wakes, who never thought to wake again,Who held the end was Death. He opens eyesSlowly, to one long livid oozing plainClosed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;And waits; and once in timeless sick surmiseThrough the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speckOf moveless horror; an Immortal OneCleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a flyFast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.I thought when love for you died, I should die.It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.