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Yes, Mathew, that's where it "really" ends - a last line of "and". At this time I was going through a phase of writing "anti-poetry" poetry. You surmise correctly: not only unable to reconcile the themes but unwilling to; meant to convey that I could go on and on with "glib and conceited" analogies, metaphors...but to what point? As, I trust, the previous sections of the poem convey. Viv Mathew Francis asked: > Is that really where it ends? Startling. (I assume it's the poem suddenly > giving up on its attempt to reconcile these themes.) > in response to my: > > Life, Death, and some Words about Them > > The owl disintegrated, mashed > in the car's fine-meshed grille. > My words absolved you from any blame: > Death is some kind of necessity... > the bird was blinded by the headlights... > But you shallow sighs and gulps of sorrow, > guilt near weeping - welling from some > core of your being? of your true self? > > Dryden called it dying, in a fine conceit; > and we made love in this dying life - > should I call it? - or life in death? > (I paraphrase now Saint Augustine.) > Anyway, I felt you die later that night, > coiled and clamped in my thick embrace, > in some symbolic act of reparation, > or creation, or something like that. > > And now that you too are crushed and broken, > dead and dying in a hundred minor ways... > No, those are glib, conceited analogies, > for I clothe that event in a grab-bag > of inadequate metaphors and myths: shielded > by our culture, traditions, inadequacies > from the raw rankness of that emotion, > and > > October, 1973. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%