Status Updates From Averno: Poems

"I was young here. Riding
the subway with my small book
as though to defend myself against

this same world:

you are not alone,
the poem said,
in the dark tunnel."

Someone like me doesn’t escape. I think you sleep awhile,
then you descend into the terror of the next life

You die when your spirit dies.
Otherwise, you live.
You may not do a good job of it, but you go on —
something you have no choice about

She can't remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.

I can verify
that when the sun sets in winter it is
incomparably beautiful and the memory of it
lasts a long time. I think this means

there was no night.
The night was in my head

This silence is my companion now.
I ask: of what did my soul die?
and the silence answers

if your soul died, whose life
are you living and
when did you become that person?

відчуття, наче кожен вірш звідси змінює моє сприйняття реальності

'My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?'

death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life