Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed-out,
The color of pearl.
In a pit of a rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow thw whole sea’s pivot.
The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.
The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.
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The last three lines of “Contusion” are the most perfect expression of death I’ve ever read:
The heart shuts.
The sea slides back
The mirrors are sheeted.
I can’t say I really understand the rest of the poem, although it’s vivid and I love it, especially the “doom mark” crawling down the wall, but those last lines stand out so completely for me that I tend to disassociate them from the rest of the poem. To me, those lines are what death is, its finality, a soul and mind vanishing completely from the ocean of life, consciousness and the world.