Dominion Over the Larger Animal

How many times I have provided For your death; the apple turned one way Then the other, an arrangement made, The softer ground. To hold your head As if this mattered, to say what I think Essential into your ear, To watch the eye look everywhere to find What it does not know it looks for. To fasten you down in the one place Where no one can say anything more, Being nothing else but breath leaving, While the man with the needle stands by Until the signal of how it is time. To believe I know what will happen next; to leave the hill As the body stiffens; to pass each blossom Of blood in the snow as if I understood All I was capable of.