| You know how people’s faces start to fade
From you soon after they have died. That’s how
It was with him. His lips seemed to evade
Me first, and then his eye with velvet brow
Went into shadow, that slow shade we hate
(As much as I loved him). Strangely his wrists
Remained in focus, both the bluish bait
Of veins, very subtle almost twists
Of them away from inner bones and knobs
Before his workman’s hands began. Well-nigh
Everything went indistinct. Silence robs.
He wasn’t dead. though silence made him die.
One factor saved his face, despite despair.
This factor hauled him back to life—curled hair.
“one who seemed faint because of the long silence”
“Whatever you may be—a shade, a man” Dante, Inferno, Canto I, lines 63, 66
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