[His Life Was the Practice]

His life was the practice of forming a single

sentence which, as he grew older, he tried to

simplify, reduce its compound-complex structure

into one statement ruled by the separate, inviolate

pronoun within which he attempted to live, always

engaged in revision and the act of becoming; as the

distilled statement gradually became a fleeting

inquiry, a mild interrogative, which he repeated and

refined, making it increasingly concise, almost, at

his conclusion, producing no more than a distinct

sound, not quite a word, less than a cry, which his

death erased leaving the question mark hanging in

the air, like a broken halo, emblem of his birth,

evolution and release: a full life.