There are cemeteries that are lonely
Graves full of bones that do not make a sound
The heart moving through a tunnel
In it darkness, darkness, darkness
Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
As though we were drowning inside our hearts
As though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul

And there are corpses
Feet made of cold and sticky clay
Death is inside the bones
Like a barking where there are no dogs
Coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere
Growing in the damp air like tears of rain

Sometimes I see alone
Coffins under sail
Embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair
With bakers who are as white as angels
And pensive young girls married to notary publics
Caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead
The river of dark purple
Moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death
Filled by the sound of death which is silence

Death arrives among all that sound
Like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it
Comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
Finger in it
Comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
Throat
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
And its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree
I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see
But it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets
Of violets that are at home in the earth
Because the face of death is green
And the look death gives is green
With the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
And the somber color of embittered winter

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom
Lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies
Death is inside the broom
The broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses
It is the needle of death looking for thread

Death is inside the folding cots:
It spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses
In the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
It blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets
And the beds go sailing toward a port
Where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral