Pity- is a human mechanism.
And the body has its own time.
And the black bear falling
out of the pine tree
falls endlessly, prisoner of air-
of bars that stretch beyond the range of cells.
What hollow is not a grave?
What empty space? The earth
a hole, a passageway, with orbit
2
as a kind of falling off, falling away,
which the day, with its shadows, imitates,
and we, tied to distances, mimic.
No, I haven't lowered my expectations:
I've learned what not to expect.
3
And the freshness in the air
this morning after rain, the way
everything glistens, as though everything
were forgotten, even if it is,
the cruelty or disinterest of water,
reducing all news, all information,
to a mood, the baby knocking her head
against the stairs, crying, her mother
rising, the stanzas in Blok's Ravenna
going on about the sea erasing
all signs of life from mossy sepulchres, the sea–
eating away eternity.
