Today death passed at last across my field Poem by Anne Vegter

Today death passed at last across my field.
Not with that barmy scythe of course,

but quite the death from all the pictures:
wily, tall, slovenly, irritated,

kicking a hell hound right and left,
that bull of the third floor,

like one who smells blood behind every door
and too dim-witted to grasp

that not a single drop
of blood clings to death.

Crosses my field diagonally,
that death has developed an instinct for form,

turns off, god only knows his destination
and of course I hád opened the door:

I've been dying of curiosity for years.
If he gave me the death

that a word stands for, if.