Though I Be Hacked.2008 Poem by Roy William Gotaas

Though I be hacked at the knees and left to bleed
Alone and growing colder,
I will not sit and wait for death.

I drank love once and strode high into the day:
Then she poured me no more and I sobered in pain,
To sit and wait for death.

But I have learned to walk on my stumps,
Looking for lost happiness,
For I cannot only sit and wait for death.

Death, as a low, short thing,
May crawl between the legs of my vacant chair,
For I am gone out searching in the howling night.