Do you know how much pain is left
In the world? One tiny bit of pain is left,
Braised on one cell like a toothmark
And how many sorrows there still are? Three sorrows:
The last, the next to the last and this one.
And there is one promise left, feeling
Its way through the poison, and one house
And one gun and one shout of agony
That wanders in the lost cities and the lost mountains
And so this morning, suffering the third sorrow
From the last, feeling pain in my last gene,
Cracks in the struts, bubbles in the nitro,
This morning for someone I’m not even sure exists
I waste tears. I count down by fractions
Through the ash. I howl. I use up everything.
- C.K. Williams
