As/Is







2.24.2004


bright star

True, candor lingers less long than this art:
a snake twists in my air to take on night
pooled in our Latinate garden, a part
of speech standing in for the Eremite
brain, stooping again to its needful task:
see where the bright Gethsemaniac shores
up confusion behind his bloody mask,
muttering what words as he moors and moors
human sinews to the unchangeable?
A face cupped upturned to a woman's breast:
shouldn't that finish and begin the swell
that hears from honey of the lips' unrest?
It burns! Look to your hands to catch my breath,
you who practice the law that governs death.