Donald Hall died today
as he so often had promised.
I suppose if I live to nearly ninety,
some lesser poet could mutter
the same proclamation over my span.

I do not know why poets
who, more than anyone,
should know they are going to spend
infinitely more time dead,
mutter on so about what it is like to die.

Or what it is like to watch another
Felled by this or that “itis” or “osis”
Or some other affliction ending in “ia” or “oma,”
leaving behind an honest love,
haunting all the places and things the living touch.

Donald Hall died for thirty years.
The first time I died, I was thirty-six, whining.
Poetry was no balm.
Language lost value, diminished in scope.
It was unrecorded, unremarkable.

Life is disappearance: of mothers, good and bad
into unphased dirt; of fathers who did or did not
play catch with sons; of brothers, sisters, and old dogs.
The dirt abides. The ending of the lives of poets
is the black at the end of the fade out.