Saul Bennett
Mourning Glory
I.
Back, back, return me
God help to the burning fields
of Yesterdeath, inside the floating
horror-bubble Just Then/Right After,
wishing yourself dead, instead -- of course
too, too easy, & idle, but not mad.
II.
Assign to the preceding
first moments (weeks, months)
of New Time, until
a hereafter so - well, hell
itself, no matter its imagined
in-ten-si-ty - a distant "place,"
laughable laps behind.
III.
The "pain" in this gallumphing
- not "pain" -- tranquil word!
More! - flash to the instant before
a car-wreck you view in which
you know you're to become the
primary wreckee - hold that!
IV. But ooooooooh...
ooooooooh..
the warm - oddly warm -
the virtue!
(oddly warm, yes)
purple-deep virtue
the shorthand, slang, screaming, Sorry!
for every sin and those mythical committed.
Not upon the freshly-dead, mind you
but, oh! the cross word expressed near another's
unexpected swift end.
Worse - a nice-a-tee undelivered then...
Ahh but: with it all...
V.
To be any other thing - never mind body -
disgusting puddle.
VI.
Yet with it all, all...
Free. You were freed. A screaming
surrender free, certainly,
but - let to be
choked without
remission,
ever - the other day in a review of the oeuvre of an underregarded
European novelist was written - "He
found the true
meaning of life - death."
And closer than that
you can't come than the opening
eternity of your own
child's death.