After James Wright’s “To a Defeated Savior”

 

After James Wright’s “To a Defeated Savior” 

 

 

I was born on a day

when God was sick,

gravely.

                     Cesar Vallejo

                     Epexegesis

 

Maybe all along you wanted to go under

Water and breathe there instead

Like the fishes and their way

Of never having to come to

The surface unless their caught lip

Lifts them and they give in

To the fight.  Beneath

It all the hard world is

Abandoned and you are

Weightless and make the proper

Exchanges naturally: the weight

Of you in the near

Absolute absence

Of light (aside from what penetrates

From above in shafts) and

You teach yourself to read

The bends and intentions of

Such reflections.  You translate

With the best of them

The possibility of the sea

Scape’s eventual absolution

That fathoms baptisms from an absent

God so that the final hands

That reach for you are human again

And they pull you to the surface

And to reintroduce you to air, how it

Scorches in its fire-

Dry enlightenment and makes to

Abandon you if Goddamn you

You didn’t clutch at water 

With so much fucking might.