Long after we stopped remembering, word of him
drifts back from the coast
to let us know he's still hanging on

in someone else's place and time,
living in a shed in their ivy-choked gardens -
his head shaved, his altered face,

the skin in patches under his eyes.
Supposedly though he's still tender and wise;
and having found out it's the same there as here -

the heat breaking out of its sack,
the stars wobbling on their black thrones -
he's made up his mind to never come back.

It's all the same; and on its verge
the borderless ocean scrawls and scrawls
reiterations which repeat

that it's all the same,
and he can fall into it and never change -
resurface, and simply swim away.