Dear Barbara:
You tear from heart a cry of love...
The strange joy of your fearful journey
Bends the knee of the beast in me.
I bow my head and burn my hands on the thought of love left undone
I shrink in horror from the fear of life
That in the past I called prudence.
Now I race heedless toward the battlefield
Freed from thoughts of victory or defeat.
"Lo, I am become death the destroyer of worlds..."
Our father who art my God bend your glory down
To touch my pitiful and aberrant imagination...
Now I lay me down to the triple world of densely populated sleep.
Oh hallowed Name brush your bright wings
Against the eyelids of the deep.
Send a tremor through idiot grammar.
Save the words that we murder for the sake of community.
Save the souls crucified on the dead words.
Ah! Eurydice, at last you sport with Orpheus
Here in the Upper World.
I rejoice in your dark passage
And see in it the only light I know.
JUNE 1980
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