Dominion Over the Larger Animal

How many times I have provided

For your death; the apple turned one way

Then the other, an arrangement made,

The softer ground. To hold your head

As if this mattered, to say what I think

Essential into your ear,

To watch the eye look everywhere to find

What it does not know it looks for.

To fasten you down in the one place

Where no one can say anything more,

Being nothing else but breath leaving,

While the man with the needle stands by

Until the signal of how it is time. To believe

I know what will happen next; to leave the hill

As the body stiffens; to pass each blossom

Of blood in the snow as if I understood

All I was capable of.