Tonight, what isn't spoken will never be spoken.
And what isn't known will never be known.
So let the silence have it –
silence, the stake – at the ferocious point of this poem.

I'm writing through my death, simply.
I'm making my way through my death as if through a blizzard.
Tonight, what isn't spoken will never be spoken,
and what isn't lived will never be lived.

My death, which has the colour of the unknown sky I've described,
stretches around me, and its thirst
continuously needs a horizon to slake it.
Give it your horizon – I'll ask that of you.

Tonight, I'm coming all the way through my death to you.
It seems a long way, but it's just a smile –
just the diffident way I caress
the hair from out of your eyes.
And I'm not a game anymore, tonight – not the gambler,
or the gambler's hand; I'm not even the dice.
I'm alive. I'm alive all the way through to my death.

You didn't understand before; you thought it was just snow.
You thought it was Thursday; you thought it was December.
But it was my death, the colour of a clear sky
no one will ever see.

You didn't understand before, but now, when I look in your eyes,
you'll look all the way through me –
all the way through, and leave nothing behind.
It's quiet tonight; and maybe there will be snow.
But it won't be snow – it will be my life.
Tonight, I'll write my way through it –
and the silence, I'll throw to the poem.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2002.