Transfiguration

The person always is

before the person was,

coughing and breathing

with the one throat,

smoking and laughing

alongside some lindens,

standing in line

for the helical escalator

at the heart of the new

architectural marvel,

working the sewing machine

and the Gatling gun, plying

whatever wares under a blaring

sun. Some days he was a knife

without a handle, others

a knife missing

its blade. I will crank

the rosined wood wheel

of my stridulent

Renaissance hurdy-gurdy

until the tune cuts off

mid-leitmotif as if a fuse

has blown in the black

box of the skull, irreplaceable:

it can’t be helped, it’s always

personal. Meanwhile we mushroom

on the forest floor, kneeling

to worship or forage. I found

in the damp of your arms

one unduly brusque evening

a lighted city, room enough

for my ribs, so I pressed them

to yours. You made room for me,

for a duration, our faces shining

and our garments white. Some nights

your wrists pulsed at my skull,

some nights your hair would

seep into my mouth against

my teeth. Some nights we slept

alone in separate dreams.

Before letting go

of a body, a body holds on

with its sugar and swearing,

its swagger and sweat,

through the regular transfer

of salt to those lips

from this thus far peripatetic

tongue, until the patient

drier air restores itself

to fill cracks heralding

a newfound vacancy,

resutures the perimeter,

resuscitates for the time being

the solitary form. A person

is a while, willed by the wind

to wander, a dialogue

between the clock face

and its hands. Here are

my living hands, gnarled

porcelain, reconstituted

from the wreckage, covered

and recovered, still adept

at signature and clutch.

I wave them past

John Keats’s wraithlike

posthumous portrait gracing

the MacBook’s backlit screen. Time

is an exit and a ligature.

Whenever you decide

to listen closely you are bound

to hear the echoes of the stridulent

excited children

in the yellow distance

chanting in unison, a mob

of flightless birds, one timeless

complicated psalm

after another

as they jump their frayed rope

on the sun-battered ruins.