So the attenuations of our lives
Are charted as polite reverberations,
Ready to be eroicomico indulgences
Or merely subjects in an academic quiz –
For such is memory’s braking, as the grave
Soul of humankind is shown as nought
On star charts, and each immensity
Aspires to be a simple once-born number.

The death of everything, we say, must be
Ensanguined by each single death: once strewn,
The blood applauds in magic resonance
That stringing-out of time we codify
As evolution. Unhappily, we try
To round off every action, and keep accounts
Mortality will underwrite. In poems,
As in life, we set out to avoid
The extra syllable, a child in mother’s arms,
Stressing, for male completeness, the end of line.