His breath curdles

"His breath curdles" is a line in Jenny George's poem Death Of A Child. I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than breath "curdling". The precision of that verb. The breath of a dying child in Jenny George’s hand: "to clot, congeal, change from a liquid into a thickened mass", according to dictionary entries; the vaporous quality of air stiffening, "little by little". Horror, pain and all-encompassing grief lived through and mesmerized into words.

DEATH OF A CHILD

This is how a child dies:
little by little. 
His breath
curdles. His hands
soften, apricots
heavy on their branches.

I can’t explain it.
I can’t explain it.

On the walk back to the car
even the stones in the yards
are burning. Far overhead
in the dead orchard of space
a star explodes
and then collapses
into a black door.

This is the afterlife, but
I’m not dead. I’m just 
here in this field.


Source: Jenny George, The Dream Of Reason, Copper Canyon Press, 2018
Etymological Source: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=to+curdle