The Last Thing
As the day disappears into night,
And the wrap of the stars is unwound,
And our tissues
tumesce
For our fluids
confessed
To the ways that our bodies allow;
And the seed opens up to the sky
To make work for the far-sighted bee,
And to brown in the light,
Try to bloom as it might,
To be felled into plain
potpourri;
Anything that has walked or just
set,
That has breathed, or been breathed, or just been,
Has an end, its fair cause,
By the pure natural laws,
And will rank among all of its kin
In the ground where all death is the same,
And what’s been is itself in the past,
And has little to do
With the world reborn new
But except what that thing had done last.