How Shall I Defy You Who Wound Me in the Night?

After William Carlos Williams

What will you say about all this, what will you

say when your own crippled voice asks you why

not take that soft step to the dark, why not

make this going to sleep the last going to sleep?

What will you say about the kiss of water that

barricades the soul against dark inches of death,

how to explain the singing mouth of the wind or

the seeds the sunrise plants in your eyes or the

perfect shapes of birds whose right names you

have never learned? How to justify the going on,

the tramping through wet waist-high fields, how

to say I am not ready to go, I am not ready, not

yet? How to say yes this is all there is, this walking

under rain, this walking under extinct trees hoping

it will rain – yes this is all, but won’t you let me stay?

Let me grow my fairy castle cactus in the north-

facing window which is the only window I have and

hope for the best.