Someone who dies in a vision

someone who dies in a vision　　is like a poet who dies in a poem
summer enters your tower and ascends
you contemplate like a god, rave like a god
number flocks of swans obsessively per millennium　　amend
the moon　　that order bleeding from thin dark claws
puts a rat through its paces with ingenuity
you grow weary of it all　　even for the wise, dying is still death
but writing　　that twice-lost stony art
reeks of rot as it gnaws your flesh
you leap into the flames again　　like a work discarded

so　　we die in you
the only inheritance a marble chair
your seat amid the keening of the blind
one man’s feet　　trampling innocent grapes

a vision　　you said　　that is to imitate ghosts in order to live
to make inquiries　　like an old beggar
corpsed on the street　　mourned by the incarnadine teeth of savage cats
but a rose smelted out of a poem, now　　that shock will always cause wonder