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Ofour own from another's breathing, Nor yet from the floating offeathers That form in our lungs when the mountain Settles like odd, warm snow against Our willing limbs. We never can really tell Whether nature condemns us or loves us As we lie here dying ofbreath And the painted, unchanging women, Believing the desperate dead Where they stripped to the skin ofthe soul And whispered to us, as to Their panting, observing selves: "Passion. Before we die Let us hope for no longer But truly know it." Drowning with Others There are moments a man turns from us Whom we have all known until now. Upgathered, we watch him grow, Unshipping his shoulder bones Like human, everyday wings That he has not ever used, Releasing his hair from his brain, A kingfisher's crest, confused By the God-tilted light ofHeaven. His deep, window-watching smile Comes closely upon us in waves, And spreads, and now we are At last within it, dancing. Slowly we turn and shine Upon what is holding us, As under our feet he soars, Struck dumb as the angel ofEden, In wide, eye-opening rings. Drowning with Others / 99 Yet the hand on my shoulder fears To feel my own wingblades spring, To feel me sink slowly away In my hair turned loose like a thought Ofa fisherbird dying in flight. IfI opened my arms, I could hear Every shell in the sea find the word It has tried to put into my mouth. Broad flight would become ofmy dancing, And I would obsess the whole sea, But I keep rising and singing With my last breath. Upon my back, With his hand on my unborn wing, A man rests easy as sunlight Who has kept himselffree ofthe forms Ofthe deaf, down-soaring dead, And me laid out and alive For nothing at all, in his arms. A View ofFuJeiyama after the War Wind, and all the midges in the air, On wings you cannot see, awake Where they must have been sleeping in flight. I breathe, and twenty miles away Snow streams from the mountain top And all other mountains are nothing. The ground ofthe enemy's country Shakes; my bones settle back where they stand. Through the bloom ofgnats in the sun, Shaken less than my heart by the tremor, The blossom ofa cherry tree appears. The mountain returns my last breath, And my hair blows, weightless as snow. When it is still, when it is as still as this, Drowning with Others / LOO ...

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