the ability to die

used to draw about his suns
some private system curiously resembling disorder
lifted its skirts and ran away
one darkening afternoon that fall
traveling to the right and erasing the old scene
as if someone were thinking up a new holiday
across the room like a vast title
because it was so elementary that it did not exist
as if there were degrees of nonexistence
a half hour of ingenious tedium
as if waiting for the offending page to apologize
as if the very season were a budding and blossoming of words
from the crowded section where colored blankets formed a vast broken quilt
dividing his body mentally into sections
devious, implausible, and theoretical
frail, alert, unknowable