Into the darkness they go, the wise and the beautiful,
the tender and the kind.
The doctoring moment is over.

A child, then a man now a feather.
Mirrors of sleep.

Absence, it doth remove
the hours and days of everyday life.

I know but I do not approve.

Silence without color sound without smell,
only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees.

Something like life but only as dying is like life.
Silence with weeping.

O Moon
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.

I know but I do not approve.

Mirrors of sleep
and all we need of hell.

Bowing not knowing to what,
nothing left of me but smoke.
Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

---

Source & Method

Cento. The contributors in order: Edna St Vincent Millay, Mary Jo Bang, Anne Stevenson, John Donne, Louise Glück, Donald Hall, Rita Dove, Joseph Brodsky, Emily Dickinson, WS Merwin, Deborah Garrison, William Faulkner