The dead still die: and in them

the living. All space,

and the eyes, hunted

by brittle tools, confined

to their habits.

To breathe is to accept

this lack of air, the only breath,

sought in the fissures

of memory, in the lapse that sunders

this language of feuds, without which earth

would have granted a stronger omen

to level the orchards

of stone. Not even

the silence pursues me.