And at last when I emerged from the crucible I found myself,
Forged anew in the heat of,
Realization, and all the phantoms of,
Youth sang hymns for what we had,
Lost and all the dead friends,
Rose from their pews to lock hands,
And we walk together back into the light of being,
I in my warm blood and beating heart,
You in the grace of forgetting,
And by now I am,
Saint of all these small deaths,
This endless parade, of eulogy and,
Flowers, soil and silence and the stillness,
That can only lead to this, resurrection,
And when I had found reason once to,
Leave this world, I dipped my head,
Beneath that cool and holy,
Water, and was baptized, again,
Alive, again