heart of the bell

if the heart of the bell breaks

catastrophe will strike: that is the legend

last time, a flood;

next, who can know but the bell, its cloven meat

quiet crack of bronze anticipating its own demise

drowned in the clang-like fist & metal murmur

what other creature keeps its heart inside its head full

of the hour’s secrets & tender prayers?

I do not doubt the stories—

how bells say & say even after

they have been lost

in the rubble or at sea

say & say how they paced

into hiding, or grieved their knell siblings

melted for war’s hungry rounds,

how they stilled their blood

in the chill of state restraint,

that longest & most silent hour

of the body’s yearning, say:

a silver bell is really a thumbscrew, no

heart at all, say: touch me,

I am no longer a bell if I do not ring

how bells say & say

perfectly tuned by centuries, their

hammered & quarreling overtures

haunting ringent ears

calling the forgotten, calling me, I’m called

to pray in the clamor, holy brazen speech

carapaced in its stony tower, devout lick of metal

to the ferrous brim, its chime sway waking my deadest earth

to pray which is to taste you ring you

loud to greet you a thousand times

offer my heart to your mouth & bellow the walls—

anything that reminds me how small we are:

to be swallowed by the boom of fullest sound,

the agony & wonder of wanting the Beloved’s more

crisp break of a mere day off the year’s chanted yearnings,

intonations that we will never last

longer than a breath in the face of the infinite

to want to be pealed by the hour, to say & say

to invite the lightning by this thunderlust,

lure the cry of livening a shatter

near to feel the crack of the ampersand

organ in the vesper’s dusky light

to know the catastrophe to come

but nonetheless

ring & ring & ring & ring