They are always out there,
the other ones. Their purpose
is to flow through the streets
as one body bent on its constant
growing. They never diminish
though daily someone dies, or moves
into the attic or somewhere unspecific
in the desert. They will close
together over my space
when I leave, as water
closes while a stone sinks.
They have always closed this way
over departures. In fact, they are
closing even now, when I am
most alive and insertive,
my voice rising above them
like vapor from a magic lamp.
Perhaps they mistake the vapor
for my imminent departure:
after all, if I am a voice
why do I need this space they press against?
How can a voice dispersing
offer so much resistance?
How can a voice be more than air,
or more substantial than the air
it rises through? How can a voice be
anything, O Lord, except its fading?
(Thus one progresses from a quizzical
lament to the cry of the Psalmist.)
My heart was agile and precarious.
I sang in my daylight sleep
and my spirit lifted toward the light.
The darkness scaled from my shoulders.
I was a fountain whose music
birds drank, and fostered the streams thereof.
Now my cry is a hangnail, a shaving,
a dewclaw longing for
even the memory of its old prey.
My heart works overtime
simply to bring its blood back
from the distant finger,
from the dry ends of the earth.
And there is no end to the others
who will flow like lava into this space
and leave only a wisp of steam rising.
Gradual
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