Death in the Occident

You are so incomprehensible

even though you are from

the space

where science and art meet,

to defeat,

all those who say “there is nothing here!”

when truly, it is the only place

where everything is clear.

You are so obscure

in your discourse

between language,

and sensation

that the only shared translation,

is the one between

tribulation

and elation.

You are something else entirely,

and that’s really the best I can say

about how inconsequential you are,

such that

I have spent my whole Occidental life

running away

from thoughts of you,

through and through.

Still you are pervasive

so binding,

that even when I stray,

hide away,

I am found

every time I see you

in the face

between a breath taken

and a breath taken away.

I have even relived

each encounter

in the maddening scent

of what I could smell,

but could never trace,

and what I could touch,

but could not embrace.

Now I am beset

by thoughts about

how you will arrive

and wrap yourself around me,

drive

the knots from my chest,

strive

to forget the West,

and take me back East

from where we will leave

Because when you arrive,

it will be

incomprehensibly, obscurely, entirely

upon the behest

of a law that is neither remembered

nor forlorn,

in the Occident.