
XII
This hand is cool and strong. This hand
is clenched. This chamber long kept closed,
archive or vault for what happened,
and all the rest as you’d suppose
suspended just like leaves in ice,
unspeaking, walled, perfecting stance
and station, form and face, in place
of reckoning or rue, a dance:
retreat, advance, repeat, almost
without the touch of hands. For how
to reason loss as just one coast
on which a vastness crashes now,
A crag, sharp-edged and mineral,
exposed, brine-dashed, and temporal?
This hand is cool and strong. This hand
is clenched. This chamber long kept closed,
archive or vault for what happened,
and all the rest as you’d suppose
suspended just like leaves in ice,
unspeaking, walled, perfecting stance
and station, form and face, in place
of reckoning or rue, a dance:
retreat, advance, repeat, almost
without the touch of hands. For how
to reason loss as just one coast
on which a vastness crashes now,
A crag, sharp-edged and mineral,
exposed, brine-dashed, and temporal?