I Am Afraid
       

I'm afraid. The evening is gray and the sadness
of the sky opens like the mouth of a corpse.
My heart has a weeping of princess
forgotten at the bottom of a deserted palace.

I'm afraid. And I feel so tired and small
that I reflect the evening without meditating on her.
(In my sick head a dream may not fit
just as a star has not fit in the sky.)

Even so a question exists in my eyes
and there is a shout in my mouth that my mouth doesn't shout.
There's no ear on earth that hears my sad bemoaning
abandoned in the middle of the infinite earth!

The universe dies from a calm agony
without the feast of the sun or the green twilight.
Saturn agonizes like a sorrow of mine,
Earth is a black fruit that the sky bites.

And through the vastness of the emptiness go
blindly the evening clouds like lost boats
that would hide broken stars in their holds.

And the death of the world falls over my life.

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Copyright © 2017 William O'Daly All rights reserved
from Book of Twilight
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission