The Convalescence Agonies

Newborn light knifes inside the blinds Silent, pitiless from the east To pierce the dregs of my dream And drain me from the womb of sleep So I rise and set forth to heal My ritual pains come ‘round again No benediction, no reprieve to obtain Tolling the dawn with a tithe, a refrain Another recovery to embody faithfully I am become a landscape of scars A patchwork province of fibrous memories Hardening beneath the hostile stars Whose weight just waits for me to fade For days to lay their fated waste For strengths reclaimed to slip away For flesh to wither in its haste Even decayed, still I aim to heal The mending is agony I flee to my punctured dream Of mindless stillness, of infinite sleep Where no woes rend me And all labors cease In yearning, suffer every downturn patiently I am become a friend to defeat Emeritus wounds, still aching, wait for me My spurned work, still incomplete Such is the body’s offering Its seasons turn, relentless and swift Its pain which teaches nothing No lesson to learn; no wisdom, no gift But the passion of transfiguration With each convalescence I am reborn, I cease to exist