“Some Consequences of the Made ThingThe End. Above these words the sky closes.It closes by turning white. NotThe white of all clouds or being within a cloud.White of worldless light. The End.Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent.Crushed grass the hooves galloped throughOr is it the binder’s glue?Some silence never not real finally can beHeard. Silence before the first words.Precedent chaos. Or marrow work.Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak.Like those scholars of pure waterWho rode through mountains and meadowsTo drink from each fresh spring a glassAnd then with brush and ink wrote poemsOn the differences of sameness,You too feel yourself taste the silent pageOf the end and the silent page of beginning.They taste so much of whiteness never moreWhite than white that’s been lost.You have some sense of the bookAltering, page sewn secretly next to page,Last page stitched to first. O, earth—It rolls around the solar scrollTurning nothing into years and years intoNothing. At The End you’re a witness to this workThat wears the witness away. And who are youAnyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover,Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade.Something similar gathers in you.Another way of saying I in a poem—Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the endThat I am just a distance from myself.And so are you. That same distance.”

− Dan Beachy-Quick −