Before Seeing

                                                                                entrance abandoned: her bedroom

*

Before Seeing

 

The Grave yields back her Robberies—

The Years, our pilfered Things—

Bright knots of Apparitions

Salute us, with their wings—

             Emily Dickinson

            (F 337)

 

 

And it comes to pass

that to persist is to be what’s seized

and turned out or at last left to

 

                e             vap         or            ate

 

from our naked

places – our skin or

the way we draw our palms

 

down the front

of our shorts and un

-knowingly expose

 

ourselves and innocent

of intention: but isn’t (and  this is

the moment lifted)

 

what’s seen doomed to be

-come a little burn that once

it’s frustrated up

 

from the singeing

skin is at once a betrayal and a longing

to be risen to the lips  and then shunned,

in turn

 

an abandonment and balm:

a tongue or a salve on the lips

of someone’s god

 

-send?  Is it here you’ll long

for an intimacy or virtue

and not for the least of these

 

but because eventually (won’t we?)

we’ll stop fixating on nothing

other than the moment

 

before it all happened:

the painter rubbing

his face and elbow before

 

he’s turned to that certain

window to be burned

by the image that will

 

volt a hill

a house

a barn

                                                a              crip         ple

 

into icons

into assailants

into lipstick

 

on pigs.  They’ll say that.

And all of them

will be wrong. 

 

And all of them

will be

right.