From "Pieta"

A belatedly posted poem for a First Friday . . .

From Jorie Graham's "Pieta"

. . .  -- Like an explosion that will not end
this dismemberment which is her lifting him up, dismemberment
of flesh into minutes. Are they notes, these parts, what is the
song, can you hear it, does it sound beautiful and true to the one

on the other side who hears it all at

once, cadenza of gaps? When she still had him in her,
unseen, unbroken, what did she have?
Before she gets him back there is something he has to cross,
as god, as thief, something he has to marry --
 ...
. . .      Listen.  Do you hear it
last, the spirit of

matter, there, where the words end -- their small heat -- where the details

cease, the scene dissolves, do you feel it at last, the sinking, where the
                                                                                  meaning
rises, where the meaning evaporates, into history, into the day the
mind, and the precipitating syllables are free at last
on the wind, sinking, the proof of god the cry sinking to where it's

just sound, part of one sound, one endless sound -- maybe a cry maybe a

countdown, love --