Dreaming of Death

I dreamed of my own death.

That death is white.
White tears flow for me like rain.
White flowers fall like clouds for me.

I died at noon.
Noon is white.
White wind solidifies because of my death.
White waves become a voice crying over my departure.

And cold white sunlight
trembles on the earth.
I lie down in a white coffin
and separate myself from the world.
While I ride a chariot being drawn by three chestnut horses
on an unknown road,
one horse neighs at length
and its four legs kick up clouds of white dust.

The horse grew tired of running.
Dirt flies off the grave digger’s shovel.
While I breathe the remaining air in the coffin, 
I am on the verge of a different colored death.

Voices come crying out of the cracked cores of ripened fruit
and also from crows’ nests nestled in the crotches of tree limbs.
The buggy bounces like a small boat on a wide river.
I examine in the trees’ fragrance the poems I left unfinished
and, regretting having cursed the black cawing of the crows,
I apologize to everything on earth.

I sleep peacefully on a plot of ground.
The maggots that writhe in my body, bones and soul,
devour me
and die on my beautiful white skull, are white.

Poems, thoughts, memories and my whole self
must certainly change into mud and fertilizer
that will themselves some day, turning white,
or being weathered,
turn into wind
and whistle beneath the sky. 

I dreamed
that my death was white.
The gate of Hell, too, is white.

DREAMING OF DEATH