And what have we done?
The year will pass regardless, yet
opportunity arises now to ask
if our deeds have sown death or life,
if life
has sprouted from our dying deeds.
Dying, however my breath may deceive,
I must ask if my hands have turned to tend
my own grave, or a garden; if my steps have bent
towards the straight, or the bent,
roads towards our inevitable death.
With clenched fist or cross taken, all of us walk
towards a year that, one year, will not renew.
And so in these dying, flowering
let the last things be our first things
as we tend our new year.
The Consolations of Writing 