After George Seferis

Trees are breathing
the darkened calm of the dead.
A river flows through my hands
yet I do not drink from it.
The wound in my chest reopens.

Life is not easily lost;
death moves in unfathomable ways
and has its own justice.
The dead escape our earthly doom
to rise again.

I see the smiles
of unmoving, broken statues
and remember the fathomless sea
and our weary friends
who do not know how to die.