Why are all the survivors of the needle's eye
        nude, as if their lifethread had disrobed
        rather than sewn them. Sans coat-fare,
        we proceed it seems only to precede;
        birth to burial, are not yet here.

        But when did we first start embracing
        the wakes of ourselves in each other rather
        than each other? As the fruit falls
        to hiatus us, its bloom spoiled by last year's cores.

        Or the sun whose portrait rots in our pores,
        those sweatbeads blurred in closeup but clear afar--
        that pointillist pap, that hybrid suicide.

        The face carefully tattooed around love's wounds
        does not itself look injured.


Copyright © Bill Knott, 2005.  All Rights Reserved