We who went away because we wished
To get something had now come back,
As the desire of all who wish to wander
Becomes home--all of us, leaving our work
Incomplete. The dead were not ghosts, only
Living people, pretending, as if to request
Of the natural world itself, whose laws,
Unlike made and actual laws, are final,
Surcease of dread. The hymns we sang
For thousands of years were tools
Of our pretending, our dreams beyond being,
In which it was never simply fear of the end
We could, perhaps uniquely, know was
Certain, but utter bafflement peering
At an obvious fact that could not be
Experienced or imagined except as bits
Of what could be, had been experienced,
Endlessly rearranged and addressed the way
We addressed each other, greetings, as if
We could understand the sun by singing to it.
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