After all, the body is still a mystery

In the hills, the old
languages are speaking 
to each other, away from 
our habit of interruption.

Clicking tongues, kisses to open
the sealed envelopes of flowers;
hard syllables sleeping 
in libraries of fog. 

The garrulous throats of small 
animals— I long to learn 
their kind of fluency, how 
everything they say

is neither mournful nor 
ecstatic though their chants 
punctuate all the hours of night. 
I want the word for sleep

to hide in its depths 
an oasis of waking; and the word 
for death to carry in its arms  
the shadow of a door.

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