Prayer in an April Blizzard
the world is falling purple.
lamplight glazes the muted, snow-swept street
and the world seems to totter
between Heaven and Hell.
swallow me, purgatory,
sever me from past and future
and let me be an image,
an urban hieroglyphic
painted on a train car,
who, as the whole world rotates on,
will stand undying
in the far-off twilight.
like a great magenta angel,
neither one of death nor life,
the snowstorm spreads its wings over sleepless earth.
let me drown in this half-night,
let me neither live nor die.
and when the wind devours me,
I shall be numb, not feeling
and so never breaking,
never again sacrificing my tears
to gluttonous dusk, but hanging
in this spider’s web of timeless time, let all the world decay,
for in a blizzard so profound,
you stare into the nothing
and it’s like nothing ever was.
I do not want to die, God,
but if this is our true world, I do not want to live.