Practising Death
“...and the curious way we
write what we think...yet
very faintly;”
Walt Whitman
I write into this space of mine
Unanswered by all ever written
Poems to be occupied
As if they are uncomfortable rooms
Each brief love curled up
As if to resist the world’s cold
These are the things
Upon which I practise death:
The man eating a flower with his nose
First the flavour and then
The cylinder of colour it fell through
To become the sky
Or the other playing thoughts
With the minds of craters on the moon
Holding out to me his bleeding hands cut
From falling onto stars...
And in the end there is no picture
Turned towards the universe
No foetus that grows to a true portrait
Outside the singular womb
It may be that emotion rewards me
And motives are irresistible
But with each greyly-drawn ghost of words
I know more certainly
I do not have the time
To transform my life into a vision
—MTC Cronin