Death

by Frank O'hara

Death

1

If half of me is skewered

by grey crested birds

in the middle of the vines of my promise

and the very fact that I'm a poet

suffers my eyes

to be filled with vermilion tears

2

how much greater danger

from occasion and pain is my vitality

yielding like a tree on fire!--

for every day is another view

of the tentative past

grown secure in its foundry of shimmering

that's not even historical;it's just me.

3

And the other half

of me where I master the root

of my every idiosyncrasy

and fit my ribs like a glove

4

is that me who accepts betrayal

in the abstract as if it were insight?

and draws its knuckles

across the much-lined eyes

in the most knowing manner of our time?

5

The wind that smiles through the wires

isn't vague enough for an assertion

of a personal nature it's not for me

6

I'm not dead. Nothing remains let alone "to be said "

except that when I fall backwards

I am trying something new and shall succeed as in the past.

Death