There is a condition
in which one remains standing
yet the knees are never acknowledged;
where weight is mistaken for composure,
and tiredness is not allowed its name.
Those known for volume
learn, privately, how to lower their voice.

Giants do not wish for death.
They wish to bend
to place the head upon its own knees,
to set the mountain down,
to step briefly out of sight
and remove the weight.

I want to die like giants:
to lie down
only after the world
has been taken from my back.

I no longer carry a sword.
Only what others
have left on my shoulders.

I was told to endure.
No one suggested rest.

It is said that giants do not cry.
They fracture instead, quietly.
Something breaks inward, unheard;
the mountain is still assumed to stand.

Night settles on their shoulders
like stone.
Its heaviness goes unnoticed.

Strength, it seems,
is sometimes nothing more
than remaining upright.

You do not speak,
because even language
has its limits.

Everything held inside
forms an orderly line,
each thing waiting
to be recognised.

Perhaps you are not a giant.
Or perhaps you are entirely one.
That is why no one asks
about the tremor in your knees.

Your standing
is taken
as sufficient.

But even night
gives way to morning.
Darkness does not hold indefinitely.

Light does not always arrive boldly.
Sometimes
it arrives hesitant.

If breathing
is all that remains possible,
it is enough.

The world
has not yet abandoned
those who continue to breathe.

And you
reading this
are here.

That
is the poem’s
most reliable line.