So maybe I do get it. The plowman, the sailors, the townspeople: everyone goes about their business, unfazed about a boy’s falling from the sky into the sea and drowning. Maybe the poem’s about dying alone.… It makes me think of that guy Billy, whispering into the phone and waiting for Manny to come. And about all the other gay men taken by that disease. And about the victims of this new plague that’s on its way.… I think about Lester Wiggins, who died alone in prison because he was denied the compassionate release that would
