Fate is hindsight

But is there proof

The doors were locked

When you simply neglected to open

The right one?

Everything that happens

Seems necessary working backward:

Your lover’s rejection, the career that sputtered,

The dreams scattered, that calamitous fall—

Or was a fall intended as the one we are told

Produced a glorious result?

Happenstance and necessity

Chance and destiny

Regardless, we are moved through this life

Through chaos or meaning—

Acceptance and reflection is all

 The dissolution —

That music hath a dying fall

From the first tremulous note—

It is a grave matter to enter this world

Forcing recognition of the mortal terror

Seizing at the breaking of innocence

A silent shout that persists

But grows tired and almost familiar 

With a crescendo like a dying fall

That passes for acceptance

Falling from the start

Where the mind goes

Memory goes

Down avenues, streets, 

And narrow corridors

Leading to unlocked doors,

Rooms with all the lights left on 

Perchance the birds

Know in their solidarity

When to scatter, when to stay.

A human hand can make them flee

Until the seed offered by that hand

Entices their wary return.

Who is friend, who is foe

Not always simple —

Ask the birds

Perchance they know.

If a meteor should rend our spinning earth 

In twain, there is no ground for belief

That the act was done to stop all human birth

Or if a tornado gathers all its force

To uproot all houses, all children, without relief

No one dare claim a purposeful course.

What then of a contagion spread 

With untold numbers of sick and dead?

Is there a benefit in seeking blame

Unless an act of horrific shame?

A virus, though a deadly thing,

Has no thought of the harm it brings—

A virus knows no one’s name.

Tadzio

Where dreams emerge like ripples

In a lapping lagoon

You are surprised, beguiled

By beauty unexpected

Long locks shining from sunlight

A face turned to the warm sun

A delicate gesture

A laugh with hair tossed

Your aging body drawn to

The shimmering dream

Pity the poor body—

It suffers and ages

While piloting us through this life

As only a body can

Until it dies and must endure the

Degradation and humiliation

Of the grave

Tortured with the corrosive fire of decay

Until what beauty it ever possessed 

Becomes broken bits of bone

We exalt the spirit and desire the formless

But when we ascend to such state

Will we not miss the eyebeams of love

And the touch of lips in our first kiss?

Un amor extraño impregna tu alma.

Oyes sonar las campanas que alcanzan 

El rincón oscuro de tu cámara,

Pero persistes en tus deseos. 

La risa que te rodea no es tuya, 

Una risa sue ignoras 

A favor de este extraño amor.

Dust

It accumulates everywhere

Absent vigilance

Its relentless accretions

Blur every object in gray monotony

Obscuring all singularity

It signifies a caked, moldy, and crumbling world

Left to itself

Like the dust we are

Without the renewing of spirit