“to breathe is a fraud”
[this is an unbosomed secret, a chaperone’s murmuring parable]
— “it is a gift, or fairly like it. . . with a gleam: mint
and pristine”, a celibate I assume. it is
a virtuous reproach deposed from
gods and woven to men;
[to breathe is an anathema],
a bewitched parcel [a mortal scar] that dies someday; but
the death of it — not death per se. . . a benediction for triumph.
The homily is all a timid
paradox; it is both a messiah and a gamble — the
truth leans only on the hinges of doubt, or on the alters
of the one that reasons. though I practice to breathe
today, the warbling air stifles: it fractures its bones,
like an unchaste saint would when his garbs troubles
— yes, to breathe is to cheat the guiltless and naive temper of the ozone.