A bell that fills with light

And warm fog, an odorless myrrh

That oscillates and turns into forms

And feelings, more real than they were

In the first moment they moved through my mind.

This is memory, the extraction

A mouthful of life’s marrow.

The experience of a mouth,

Of strangeness, the plunge of pain,

The outward surge of want,

The body of an allusory glance,

Fully fleshed.

I was made for them, to hold them

To me, like children; to rear them

And play out their imagined patterns,

To suffer with them, to feel, over and over

The shuddering instant of death.

I will hold no more promises

Up to this world, nor live in terror

Of its impermanence.