By Madeleine Roberts
Out of the void
where nothing grips
to nothing
in the bottomless cold
you shaped
words, like pearls,
in the warm shadow
of your mouth
that bore upward
reflecting
the light of future heaven
and the color of future earth,
the poetry of all beauty
which before
was not
In the visions
we saw forests
arranged in neighborhoods
like the palaces
scattered throughout
the deathless city
as the heat and burn
of the infant sun became
the first metaphor
for love,
with which
you fired human hands
to sing the language
of touch and friction
and then
these fever minds
you spoke
into speech, gave sense
to understand the rhyme
between nature
and yourself,
strength to pull phrases
from the eternal
(imagining that—
like you—
they have made beauty
where once
there was nothing)
We saw too
our days of slow dying,
these hearts
pushing feeble lifeblood
into mouths shaped
a little like yours,
crying
in the early darkness
when isolation
begins to resemble
comfort
And you,
from the shallow breath
after a hard-fought
amen,
still hold your words
to the wound
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