Cancer and Complaint at Midsummer

Because the silence of the dead, that blue expanse of sky about to ashen here above my head, is easily ignored, our tears are blamed on flowers whitening limbs of trees, the very air, with hymns of summer pollen no one hears except for women—old, devout. And now, these humid months, dispute them not: midsummer has no name among the dead, no Latin root to which it can be traced, no swarm of conjugations to decipher. So little left to write this summer, my mind now weak in handling form, which I still cling to just the same.