for Walt Whitman
Forsake the engine, not from righteousness but preservation.
Lay aside the pitch and tumble that spreads havoc
in the living entity, who's found no method of conservation
that would conserve an hour extra of breathing
when the spectral sickle sings for the final breath,
which it does for all, for me, for you, ubiquitous,
irrevocable in its undeniability, its surety, its calm.
Conservation fails us, speed will not lengthen the course:
intractable exercise, employment, ruthless levels of activity
shudder with their own uncomfortable impotence.
Time urges us to spend, to fill, but with a quality
not quantity, without comparison, valuation, judgment,
freedom is the focus on a moment, the only moment
tangible to the digits of experience, more than mental postulation,
wholly unimagined in memory, ignored by prescient faculty,
the magnificent present! indelible instant! imperative tense!
A crumbling fraction (all the we have) lost to worldly horror,
rarer still than an emperor's treasure, stolen
by each ourselves, in accomplice with the shadow,
from an inner sanctum's carelessly open window,
left flung in the rush for achievement,
while fluttering teeth askew in a skull
echo the jackhammers railing pavement.