Two Poems

Hymnal I

Winter again, throbbing as brightest fear.
On the westbound train into the city, a man
reads from a prayerbook, the timbre of his
breathing an ofrenda, an insistent wave. His
voice I claim as my own (suffer quietly), and
I imagine her in bed, alone, arms raised to light.

Sleep now, without disquiet.

--December 22, 2008

Hymnal II

“Love is a special humiliation reserved
for bleating dogs, infantrymen, the elderly,
and the invalid,” you once said. In your
mouth, memory becomes its own pressing
noise, and yet, in that battery, the crowding
of the heart is refused no longer; another
lamb siphons the afterbirth from her young,
and a wind, insolent, forces itself through
marrow in steps as delicate as hunger.
“Love,” you say years later, “is a question
borne not of necessity, but of integrity.”

--December 21, 2008


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