In the blue of midnight,
the teeth of stars biting your eyes,
you ask to be understood.
And yet where in this web of images
can I find
myself, let alone
you?
And what kind of question is that to ask
when there is none but borrowed light?
How can we see in this black, this maze?
We can but fumble for our eyes with our invisible fingers
and find only clods of dust
with clods of dust.
That is what they say.
And then a man came to save the dust,
to cup it in his hands like precious water,
his hands of dust,
and raise it up, though some, he said,
will slip through the cracks in my fingers and be forever lost,
but this is the way of things, he said.
To raise you he said he'd come,
so they raised him
and nailed him there
like a picture
and when he fell down he raised him up again,
but I am with Thomas.
Show me these wounds,
show me. How else
but by reason am I to come to you?
How else but
with these fingers, these eyes, both dust,
both dust,
they say.
But where is this grit,
these scraping motes?
And what if your laws are not my laws?
And what are my laws?
As I see it
in the impossible moonlight
it is only smooth paper, this skin,
pale and ready for symbols,
the symbols of you.
I will scribble here till you come,
drawing memories of dreams on the lids of my eyes
that I might see.
There is no God but God.
Amen, for Christ's sake already.
9/22/99
Jim Genzano
