My body wears
the light and substance of the dead.
Daughters and sons of Artemis
come close, and you, my hungry geese.
Here's wheat. The living must be fed.

My ghost, my self, most intimate stranger
standing beneath these lyric trees
with your one wineglassful of morning
snatched from the rushing galaxies,

bright-haired and satin-lipped you offer
the youth I shall not taste again.
I know, I bear to know, your future
unlooked-for love, undreamed-of pain.

No need for language, the great mirror,
when the body's genius
lights us past logic into rapture.

I must in this gross darkness cherish
more than all the plenitude the hunger
that drives the spirit. Flesh must perish
yet still, tomorrow and tomorrow

be faithful to the last, an old
blind dog that knows the stairs, and stays
obedient as it climbs and suffers.

In the space between love and sleep
when heart mourns in its prison
eyes against shoulder keep
their blood-black curtains tight.
Body rolls back like a stone,
and risen spirit walks to Easter light;
away from its tomb of bone…