Winter raging The color gone, hands were blue and cold A recitation I slowly read you Tomb for Anatole: He was eight years old A dead child is no Occasion for a song Where did I go wrong? When they say face facts, disobey that There's singing still left to be done They still can't name that, fragrant Wind rolling off a corpse Until the day that you play back the tape that you made Record your mother saying every word Pronounce the gray that The rains had brought over the sun Like a veil to suffocate the earth But hunger is first And I could feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum I remember snow Saw it fall Watched a child learn, the word 'nightfall' And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all I learned the word "forever" from Demerol I let my body go: I feed the thaw Like jumping off a cliff, but never falling A dust finer than smoke A memory in my throat A flame that pulses cold A faraway echo ... Though hard to feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin. The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum And I could feel in my body time rushing in The way nothing must have felt when something started to begin The way all of your sympathy taught me something was wrong Secret disfortune, this cold, slow momentum I remember snow Saw it fall Watched a child learn, the word 'nightfall' And sleep because it's sad, or not sleep at all I learned the word "forever" from Demerol I let my body go: I feed the thaw