Sublime

People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn’t sleep.

SONO’S DEATH POEM Don’t just stand there with your hair turning gray, soon enough the seas will sink your little island. So while there is still the illusion of time, set out for another shore. No sense packing a bag. You won’t be able to lift it into your boat. Give away all your collections. Take only new seeds and an old stick. Send out some pra

Because nothing could be taken from me, I thought, if I had already given it away.

had one, too, though at that date I wasn’t sure this father was still what you’d call “alive.” When I was four or five, my mother told me she’d changed him into the garden gnome that sat beside our front steps; he was happier that way, she said. As a garden gnome he didn’t need to do anything, such as mow the lawn—he was bad at it anyway—or make an

will be able to commit no more. If you were to dig a grave for her in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it, you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly