Until the very end of dying
there will be one wind in your throat
and one train, voices and a storm.
Once the landscapes are gone and the end itself is over
you will be an outline on a distant ice floe.
And once the last face has happened
only the sky and your face will remain incomplete.
Rock will come to its long ending, earth to its deep ending.
And beyond the sky you will breathe.
Yet this image only will endure on the skin
and then, behind another and behind one unknown:
a cathedral, its bottom made of fog and leaves.
Just an image, an experience. Do not get confused. Banish thought,
for your sake, the cathedral’s, the leaves’.
Thus the loneliness will no longer be personal.
Light will breathe beyond the sky,
unfinished.
Before the soul there will be certain signs:
bracelets, rings, pearls, mother-of-pearl buttons -
spaces and objects of prognostication.
And then from the Atlantic
the land of mirrors emerges.
And slowly you recall the town where your
eyes began, for the first time.