Movement and Passage

Mature or immature,
whatever this body may be—
it stirs, it moves,
a particular beast.
It speaks,
it searches for pleasure,
it hunts for flesh.
Sometimes it slips into the jungle,
waiting in ambush.
Sometimes it goes
with the wild beasts,
renewing its ancient kinship.
Then it returns—
a poet,
into the hell of the city,
where these lines
emerge into poems,
then fall silent again
in some fearless practice.
The body, drenched and empty,
crushed by lust,
eaten by greed,
wasted by disease.
And still,
movement and passage
lay bare its fatigue.
It lies on the stale bed,
just a little stirring—
yet so costly,
so dearly built.
If it falls still—
so be it.
Life is nothing but this:
to move, to speak.
Sometimes it strips itself bare,
consuming,
wringing orgasm
from its flesh.
If there is a heart,
there is semen spilled,
there is vomit of hatred
and of ethics betrayed.
There is no body beyond the body.
Movement and speech—
as long as they last,
that is how long the path runs.
Afterward, no path at all.
In the posthumous world
to lift waste from the womb of the body
and place it in the vessel of the mind—
what a burden.
And who can say
when I shall return again?