|
By John Ciardi Submitted by Misti Date: 2002 Jul 16 Comment on this Work [[2002.07.16.00.27.19012]] |
|
Martyrs, gunmen, angry wives, desperate husbands, and fugitives snap their lives with guns and knives, lions and visions, jolts and jars, poison, plunges, and gas from cars. They set their hearts on seeing stars and they see stars. Through every haze that's in them all their nights and days they get to see the whole sky blaze that once. Just once. But once will do. Finalities are not to chew. The damned get one gulp. Then they're through. We couldn't praise them, you and I still, we note as they plunge by they do stick to the point. That's why we half admire them. I confess I do. Whatever their distress they leave with something to express. We don't die: we just digress. It's easy to walk out of Hell. But there Hell starts again. Another channel but the same damned show. Hell's what we are, not where. It's easy to walk out of Hell? To what? To exactly nothing nowhere and unemployed. The Anti-Hell's not Heaven but the void. |