come closer.
I smell you on my clothes, my books,
The toys my children scatter,
My two or three private parts
Devoted solely
To radiating pain, my organs
Of need and pleasure. Why do you bother
To provoke this terror
In something small and unimportant
That asks nothing
But to be allowed to vanish?
Why do you bother with us at all
When your being is bounded
By no conditions
But absolute freedom
And absolute distance
From the bits of bone and truth
That come closer and closer to freezing
The closer we come
To you?
3
The footsteps of the Lord
In the garden. I know
The drill: I pull on my skin
And try to act human,
Knowing you’ve already noticed
The difference between the creature I am
And the creature you thought
You were breathing yourself into
On the sixth day, at evening. I know
You will clothe my nakedness, tender
But also disappointed
That I need to feel something
Other than naked
When nakedness is the image
In which I was created, the image
I see through your see-through robe
Of shy young stars
That sing very quietly
So as not to drown
Your image singing inside them.
You want me to see you
Picking your way
Through the garden of my body.
You try so hard
To be seen. I try so hard not to be
One of your hopes
Staring hungrily through the leaves.
I talk to you incessantly
But you can count on the fingers
Of the hand you don’t have
The times I’ve heard you answer. Occasionally
I’m blinded
By your beauty. One blink
And the reassuring
Lids of life
Close over you again. Now
I have no life to lid
The terrifying continent of your longing
To meet a gaze
That meets your gaze
Naked and unashamed, an image of you
That can stand the sight
Of the image it was made in.
4
You want it both ways, to be the sun
And the clouds that smother it, the heart
And the heart that breaks it, meaningless suffering
And the truth
That redeems it. Nice work
If you can get it
But you won’t get it
From me. You offer yourself
Like an apple reddening
Within my reach, dangling
On the lowest branch, a generous
Hermeneutical fragrance
Drenching every event, trivial and tragic,
In eau d’significance. After all,
What choice do I have? Your angels
Torched the trees
Of life and knowledge,
Although I’ve made a decent living
Battening
On their ashes. You too
Have a taste for ashes. Of ash. Of something
Burned a long time ago
And still burning
Somewhere close to my mouth, the smoke of you
Clogging my nostrils,
A cry for help
I’ve become too bored
To notice. You woo me with the fruit
Of your intimacy, infinity thick
As star-sparked honey, fine-toothed combs
Of forgiveness, the barely-remembered
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