Tales

What if I do not leave a mark
an act, a monument, a book
that someone would want to make
a book of me, a thing and say
he thought these thoughts
did these things, was not altogether
good—might I then escape
clean away, hold myself half true
until perhaps some passing trowel
should raise my bones upon a table
two thousand years hence and say
he was a man who lived on meat
and did not suffer wounds.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022.