How We Bear It

Franz Wright

One Heart 

It is late afternoon and I have just returned from the longer version of my walk nobody knows about, for the first time in nearly a month, and everything has changed. It is the end of March. This morning a young woman described what it's like shooting coke with a baby in her arms. The astonishing windy and altering light and clouds and water were, at certain moments, You. 

There is only one heart in my body, have mercy on me.

The brown leaves buried all winter are now creatureless feet running over dead grass beginning to green, the first scentless violets here and there, returned, the first star noticed all at once as one standing staring into black water.

 Thank You for letting me live for a little as one of the sane; thank You for letting me know what this is like. Thank You for letting me look at Your frightening blue sky without fear, and Your terrible world without terror, and Your loveless, psychotic and hopelessly lost, 
with this love.