i

The prophets don’t come, but the prophecy
won’t stop arriving. I heard it then—
all words pronounced at once. My speech,
littlest of languages, and you from your bough
had seen what I could not: There is only one hour,
its earthen and cumin mind, the tuning fork
of your supernal certainty. Song pours out
the self. From the ruins of a wedding canopy,
a flute. Sound up from sound. For you,
I gathered from the trees their language,
the solitary hour crisscrossed by astonishments.
I, for you, let it go, ate snow. Admit it
—your gladness.
The first heaven is a heaven of windows.

ii 

For
the sake of heaven,

let letter be inlet, let
the namegiving sky

seek its disparate god.
In night’s unmistakable track,

thought cowers. No vowel,
but your eye

ticking toward me.
The temple is gone,

 suffering’s crimson thread
bound tight above the hoof.

 Prayer frees what
of music meaning denies.

The word’s duration, corridor
through which the dead pass. I

held to your breath, to your sonatas
and geraniums. Plural, even

I, engraved upon this quiet.
To my name, you gave my name.

I think of you and touch myself.

iii

I could not describe it—what
to the tree’s limbs the wind did
in your desert. I chopped it down
by the axe’s light and
still I chopped it down.
It was not mercy. It was
you who shouldered me. I lay
before you my unalloyed quiet.
O, let withdraw now
the lips of smooth things.
Sense, we know,
is what cruelty makes.
Weeping, you sanctified
the name. I held your fingers
in my mouth, their good work.
The garlanded world,
suddenly in overbloom.
The scribe reversed two letters.
Then time began.