Deaf

The years whisper away and the voices behind
louder but more indistinct, a growing crowd
swelling but unintelligible, an accusing choir:
I have lived my life wrong.

Still. The shock wave bends the air, 
all the lines curve, the air ripples: a hiccup
of the earth or a belch of the sky. Are you deaf, man?
Yes. Oh yes.

Do you even remember which first kiss it was?
Whose was the tenderness? Which constellation
pulsed in the midnight sky? What is memory for, then?
Well, not that. Not immortality.

Where death is, I am not: where I am, death is not,
said Epicurus. But still the cognitive theorists aver
that an autopoietic system
cares for itself. Willy nilly. Say when.

Love comes late and untidy
bold and crumpled, crooked and strong:
it's a tune now hummed under my breath: it needs
no voice.