How many times can you die to me?
How many times must I mourn you?
Again and again, I kneel at your deathbed;
again and again, the hours plod
like plumed wailers hunching before a catafalque.

Again and again, I sway at your crumbling graveside;
again and again, a dull bird weeps
to the drone of my dry howling
by the deep-dug hole, where I feel the pull to plunge, bereft,
unbalanced on the sweetness of turned soil.

Again and again, I moan goodbye
in a faraway graveyard voice not mine;
in a crushed dirt-dry tremor
thrown from the strangled throat of grief.

How many times must I mourn you?
while you strut, square-chinned, loin-lit,
with life coiled like an about-to-strike
snake in your loins?

Oh, how many times can you die to me?
I am so weary, so tired
of my old mourning brooches;
of their sharp and lethal pins.
How many times can I pierce my own white breast
with the rusted darts
of this black,
this ebony
bleakness?

Oh, how many more times?
Can you tell me?
Oh, little brown bird,
can you tell me?