Glosses on texts by William Desmond
As I returned home
in the dark, a whitish, blue-
ish long-snouted thing
retreated under
the house. Roadkill, I whispered,
to my profound shame.
The Absolute re-
veals itself by retreating,
gives way to mortal
things. I was blinded
by the emergence of the
real, the distinguished thing.
In winter we share
the chair, my master and I.
We keep the pillow
warm for each other.
For me this means sacrifice,
like getting up and
down as he wishes.
My perfect obedience
is spiritual
judo. He calls me
his genius loci to
his pretentious friends.
When he’s in bed I
watch the moon as it rises
through the emptiness.
See ‘Emily Dickinson’s Fly.’
Let it rain. Let it
rain on the roof, you’re a fish
in the flow of now,
a child in the womb,
a man in prayer’s embrace.
It names the one way
we know the nothing
that pours through the opening
in the beginning,
the mystery of
which begins for us with the
grammar of ‘Let it.’
The fly tickling my
ear is the last of its kind,
everybody says.
It keeps returning
to my ear. It doesn’t buzz.
Maybe it’s dying.
It visits other
tables but returns to my ear.
People look away.
Until it moves I
can’t tell that it’s on my ear.
Everybody sees.
So this may be why
Emily Dickinson stayed
at home with her fly.
We have come through to
the edge of our lives. We sip
coffee and eavesdrop.
Our voices crack. We
groan as we shift in our chairs.
We find each other
hysterical. Yet
we are the seeking of love’s
criss-crossing arrows.
We silver codgers
are beside ourselves sitting
beside each other.
What’s love got to do
with it? I wake up on the
right side of the bed
in which I sleep a-
lone. The emptiness is whole,
half-light promising.
I dream a little
of past loves. This very bed
complained woodenly.
‘It bears / Its forebears’
I pray from my own psalter,
God and the Between.
A religion of
love? That would be mostly hope.
Hope is appealing.
