Ariel: The Restored Edition

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

He has seen too much death, his hands are full of it.

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,

Me and you.

I am myself. That is not enough.

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;

Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

New statue

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:

It is what you fear.

I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,

Its dissatisfactions?

Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

I am terrified by this dark thing

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.