43.

The embarrassment of words abandons us

To the world, traces when breath and taste

Are gone. We scratch out signs to leave,

Archive, shard, sigh, footnote, plea,

The dust on our heads after. Words never

Quite arrive like flesh itself, and life

Sheds like the tides a kind of accident,

A debris, ashes. Then first and last words,

Literally and not, begin to forget

Their speakers. I don’t remember what

Noise I first made and will not recall

The final syllables. Words are fictions

But breath and your eyes, son, are as real

As the earth, the sky, the puzzlement.