To Auden

I sit upon the doorstep
of this intermittent age:
an eye for every shimmering light,
a hand in every page;
and cannot help but notice
my own body wearing thin
with the entropy of ages
like a river on my skin.

I know I am eroding--
it's a fact that I can tell
like every kindergarten schoolchild
who has heard the churchs' knell:

it doesn't matter that there's heaven
or that Jesus never burned--
the death that he's been teaching
will undoubtably return.

We're chipping at a mountain
but we're been keeping all the stones
and putting them in pockets
so as to weigh down every bone:

if life is like an airwave
we cannot help but transmit,
then the body is its tower
and I cannot help but sit.