One

by Franz Wright

Bodies are endless, but sentience
gazing from endlessly various eyes
is one, and I can prove it.

Music’s an idealized and
disembodied nervous system.
Who’s the sacrificial famous person now?

The angel of death is the angel of birth.
Look, look, the monster
has tears in his eyes.

A pair of dark glasses
smoking a cigarette;
a pair of dark glasses, initially

and solely manufactured
for ancient Chinese
judges . . .

When you die the world
is going to die, the world
and all the stars —

what dies when you are born?

When you have to take it to feel, more or less,
the way you once felt
when you weren’t taking it,

I’ll meet you at high moon.

I’ll greet you,
like the other
last speaker of a language.

At the trial of sleep,

theoretically,
I’ll be seeing you.
In the aisles of the pharmacy

open all night I’ll be waiting.

At the front door of the insane
asylum dollhouse of your childhood
I’ll be waiting, I will meet you

at the marriage of never happen
and forever, I will be you;
at the velvet heartshaped dark

green morning glory leaves, my
dragonfly, sister, sexlessly wed
to me by unbreakable vow,

by corpselike refusal to speak.