Anniversary of Faulkner's Death

A Poem

Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, age 64. The poem first appeared in From The Ground Up (1992), has since been revised. The story is "Carcassonne."

An Arrangement of a Story by Faulkner

And you on a buckskin pony
with eyes like blue electricity,
a mane like tangled fire,
galloping up the hill
into the high heaven of the world.

In a dismal garret,
beneath tarred roofing paper,
the poet’s skeleton resists,
desiring sleep and peace, knowing
the end of life is lying still.

But Pegasus still gallops,
wanting to perform something
bold and tragical and austere:
saying No to death.

Still galloping,
the imagination soars outward;
still galloping,
it thunders up
the long blue hill of heaven,
its tossing mane
in golden swirls like fire,
a dying star upon the immensity
of blackness and of silence.

But from the thunder, punily
diminishing, reincarnated,
rises the poet’s voice:
The flesh is dead, living on itself,
consuming itself in its own renewal
but I will never die,
for I am the Resurrection
and the Life,
saying No to death,
again and again and again.