Yet the books

“

His wizened hands rising out of a grey suit-sleeve
stuttered and stumbled through the aisle on legs

racked with arthritis, his craggy fingers
shaking as he offered out our fiscal eucharist.

I thought of Wright and on resurrection.
Of a little apple tree outside a criss-crossed pane.

Maybe this man could teach us how to die.
After all, in this vaulted room with whitewashed walls

and stories stained and carved into light, darkness,
his crooked walk and cracking smile — reflected

in the stone-struck silver offered on holy hands —
cried out louder than the pipes of the organ,

the chorus of forest-green voices,
the mutterings of the congregation.

”

“Fugitive is the soul in this world, and soulless is the world, when men do not find themselves in the sphere of the knowledge of the unkown God, when they avoid the true God, in whom they and the world must lose themselves in order that both may find themselves again.”

“You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead”

“smoke slides between beer bottles
and coffee cups balanced on words
and I —
Stretched, like a cat in the sun;
a lump of paper cradled
in my eyes.”

“She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she’s wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o’clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter’s kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
Could it be worse.”