Verse
Ponsot, Marie
Marie Ponsot (For William Cook, drowned in Maine, and for Boy Huss, lest In Indonesia) Death is breath-taking. We all die young, our lives defined by failure of the heart, our fires drowned in...
...We plan on pouring out the best ripe part of wines our need or grasp has $ucked or wrung from fruit and root — but stop before we start...
...we stand stunned, raw as a land-child first looking at only ocean all the way to sky...
...We all die young, our lives defined by failure of the heart, our fires drowned in failure of the lungs...
...stopped by awe we wrap our secret in us as we die unsaid, into objects of others' good-bye...
...About to reach what we've wanted, our hope strung toward a closed chord of accomplishment, we love what we're full of, ourselves...
...taste like talk fades from the stiffening tongue...
...8 May 1987: 289...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 9
