Fatal
Blessed is the tree for it can hardly feel
and even more the stone, because it feels no more,
for there is no greater pain than the pain of living
or greater grief than life with conscious thought.
To be and to not know, and without a course to be,
and the fear of having been and the terror the future holds.
And the sure fright that tomorrow death will find me
and to suffer life, and to bear the shadow, and to suffer for
that which we do not know and can hardly guess
and the temptations of the fresh fruits of flesh
and the tomb that awaits with wreaths of interment
and to not know where we’re going next
or where we surfaced…