You were ascetic
in the cradle of your life,
yielding to the blood
when it explained to you
that yours was a weak fiber
still, and you kept a quiet life,
the keeper of the vigil underground,
with one hundred thousand consorts
equally unborn and equally destined
to a long and hanging fate, as yours.
Then, on the threshold of being forgotten,
you broke through the cavity in a burst of desire,
but you were small and green and did not realize
that you were one of many of the same.
Yet the ones who look up to you
look up because they see that, in fact,
in dying you are living and polished,
and they think it is strange, and they want to know,
how does one grow so popular in death?
And you, meanwhile, keep mouthless,
for you never knew such vanities,
and what is the occasion,
when there are so many of the same,
growing and falling everyday?
After all, your course was charted for you
by gravity and when the time for parting
has come, you drop to the torn fabric
of a subway chair and get caught on the thread
and no one gives you a passing look.