What is it about the Abyss
that tempts the young poet to kiss
the air and head for the nearest cliff? This
unreasonable attachment to the bliss
of falling -- what accounts for it? Unlike the hiss
announcing a reptilian presence, the word Abyss
creates the object of our dread: it exists, it is,
widening like the gulf between whis-
key and wine, and we, drunk on neither, miss
the days when we, too, tumbled headlong out of heaven, pissed