NEED TO EXPRESS

With time and fatigue-he said-words die too.

Nothing is left him to express nothingness. His fingers

have grown very thin. His ring slips off. He ties it to a string,

drops it into the well, lifts it up again. Desolation. The well

has no more water now, nor does the string have an meaning.

Anyway, the striking

of that ring on the stones as though it were counting something,

something that should be counted, that it might result at evening

in the same odd number written on the back of the door.