The Giftbearers

 

Just here, in those foreign spaces

where the blind worm probes

the cavern of the mouth,

grappling against its slick mooring

toward that undiscovered sound

by which desire might harden

into sustaining marrow, one may,

through careful listening,

perceive the insidious nature

of all offerings.

 

There is, on this threshold,

no trembling: only the mute,

joyful offering of the self,

throwing all prior gifts

into proper relief.

It is heartbreaking,

this happiness, racked

by the same shadowy motives

marking innocence, misleading

and misled, too eager

in conversion to be mistaken

for malice. Those who breach

these walls know the emptiness,

the lack of life, know only

this vague sense of proportion

to suggest any other

has ever passed this way.

 

How terrible, then, those eager eyes,

that hungry gift, those willing hands,

like an offering to some long forgotten god,

laid out to decompose

 

in the heat of an accidental sun.