"Charm of that Cool Air"

What is the wisp of difference
Between the liver-spotted soul
Still writing daily before death
From a life of medication

And the adorable young man
About to die on his crutches
For the sake of a well-known secret
Shared by both of them? A fiction

Holds self-destruction can succeed.
It can't. If it could, every dream
Would have sent every dreamer
Sweetly to deep oblivion.

We have, who have nothing, such things
In common that our sins must seem
The same to every righteousness.
We protest when we surrender.