I. A Dizain
If we say its name, speak the word out loud
will it tarnish as pewter, a mouth un-kissed
dissolve like salt, or crumble like a cloud?
Now, unspoken, it hangs as morning mist
ungraspable as water’s turn and twist
its melody carves a virgin path, lies
in the cavity between four locked eyes
woven into gaps between words unsung
its opal gauze draping mind’s thirsty skies
glistens as liquid gold on silent tongues II. Infancy It is quite a new thing: a kind of infant, newborn.
We cannot stop looking at its skin, delicate limbed and peach pink.
Impossible to hold its arms, legs still. They flail, jolted with newness.
A gaping mouth, the diameter of a thumb, gropes for nourishment.
Lips fumble for the latch, eyes bright and blind.
It needs constant tending, must be fed by the hour.
Its age counted in days, yet its cry shatters earth,
expands into every second of mind’s landscape.
Claws the body with beauty. Interrupts the sleep.
It feels unnatural when you are separated from it. Part of your body now.
All day and all night, every second, even when showering, you must think of it.
Its powdered newborn scent: bewitching, terrifying.
Joy concentrates in its body. It encloses the seed of future life:
all suffering, all rapture of universes to come
inhabits its trembling frame.
III. Torture
Every breath of absence, a pull of the torturer’s wheel.
No need for punishment, for talk of sin.
By itself, it is punishment enough: the body gasps and aches.
We are sick with tenderness. It makes us sick.
With the pain of a melody that will not leave us in peace.
Day and night, it tortures us with the dagger of its divinity,
the song that drifts through days, lingers in crevices of the hour.
Every minute, second after second,
torments the ear with beauty. Relentless.
Or like the sleek caress of the river’s tumbling over stone:
not a solid thing to be touched, but inscrutable as liquid,
undefinable as water, forever flowing down the rough edge of the mountain,
blindly sweeping toward the sea. We cannot grasp it; it falls through our fingers.
Or a hunger pain in the cave of the belly
that bores deep, deeper—
a carapaced beetle burrowing into black and crumbling soil.
When will it reach the bottom of me?
When will it touch bedrock?
A hunger, bottomless, digs into the center of the earth
with its ravenous loving of man,
of beast, of trees with their feathered comfort of leaves,
of cloud-scarred sky, of the immensity, the cacophony of sea,
of art that flows from his mouth, his hands.
Why is this not the same as the love of God?
I am a burned patient, a victim of the ruthless burning.
It is no gentle thing, it scalds us in the hidden places
beneath the visible layer of skin. We must go about our day,
ignore the bleeding, the weeping of open wounds.
A sliver of bliss:
it is some precious egg held at the center
of the body's nest, delicate,
sheltering a yet-unraveled new world,
nascent, yet to be born.
Wrapped in a film, in husks of pain.
I peel it back, only to find more layers,
smeared with grief, grease left on fingers, under nails.
Left alone, the nestling flaps and shrieks pathetic, abandoned and motherless as morning stretches its wings to afternoon, plumes fade to dusk. The voice’s echo, the face's image, memory of your voice those few spoken words, like the scent of herbs lingering on fingers all day, all night, smaller than firefly breaths these seeds of love, wrapped in the fresh pulp of our misery
The heart, hunched and whipped, labors as a slave to pump its fevered juice.
Your absence, whose every punishing breath
rakes me over the coals.
The forbidden-ness of touch, like the hangman’s noose:
yes, it can be done, but then of course you must hang,
must place your neck in the loop, a rope rough and eager
to tighten around the soft skin of your collar.
Here we are again, caught in the torturer’s chamber,
caught in the sun-less dungeon of ecstasy,
caught in paradox.
IV. The Gift
An epiphany. Perhaps God’s whisper to me when lost in morning song: this is my gift to you. A precious but dangerous gift, like fire containing both the seed of new life and the embryo of annihilation. Both trembling in a space smaller than a finger’s tip, a flame’s flickering edge. After years of cracked, cold earth, dead grasses—yes, a gift, an answer to my prayers. An object of rare beauty, to be cherished. Bestowed only a few times within one's lifetime. Be careful: it is magnificent, but perilous. It may renew the spirit, or set off your unraveling. Shelter it between your palms with care, contained like a candle behind glass,
lest it spark a raging fire that consumes home, city, civilization. Or is it a trap laid for us, a riddle we must pass through?
The question: what to do with it?
This final love story, before age fades you away.
Before spirit sloughs off, before the heart contracts, diminishes, before the inevitable weakening –
this sudden rush of new life, like some hidden spring unearthed by an ax’s blade.
Remember, all flavors of love – between man and woman, child and mother, sister and brother, are facets of the same thing, reflections of different angles of His face. None is unholy. Each one, a jewel, a gift from God.
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