I am walking through a field of hemlocks
And everyone is picking some and
Committing suicide—
All in rows they fall like ripened fruit,
And worms wriggle and giggle just the same,
As their murmuring lips blister,
As their eyes exclaim—
In high school, everyone dies a little,
But they don’t look good doing it—
Sophocles never went to his classes,
As he skipped out and jumped around the sun,
Trying to figure out why the girl in
Second period never looked at him,
But he fell dead just before he was done—
And, just to the east, in her burnished suit,
The sea is longing to undress as
Lost children throw themselves into her
Throat and proclaim that the world is all
Too much, while behind them the city is building
New finer buildings up to the sky,
And the highest windows are like diving boards
For high diving suicides,
But their bodies never reach the places
When they fall, the places they were trying to get to,
Their lover’s home….
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem