BY PETER COOLEY
Copyright is held by the author.
How can we love the dead
when they love us, only eternally?
How can we dare transfix them in a prayer
longing encircles, quickly circumscribes?
When they have ceased to wonder how we are,
occupied as they must be, hourlessly
in a heaven with their new imaginations?
Here, down-heaven in my little fractures,
I try to assemble some facsimile,
Love, of that longing. I try to sound a note —
timpani’s symphony. I finish a whole bar.
Even if the smallest of my measures reach you—!
And now you surround me, encircling, encircling,
then, taking back your resurrection, disappear.