Orpheus in the Lost Amphitheater
When I emerged, it was dusk & I learned that this too is hell,
an afterlife, the center of a lost amphitheater whose seats
are a deep moss, wet-black with yesterday’s rain. As I faced west,
the sun, obscured by the pines, shone in the gaps, pulsed
as it mimicked her descent: the heart beneath her delicate ribs
that I’ve lost each day anew. It was then, in that first dusk,
that all the abstract longing of the world, twined from her sinew,
became song: her eyes: April: the frame with which the gods had placed
a great silence, that stirred & released the need for sight,
when she came – blushed & final. Even the field that had her
without me on our wedding day. I imagine that too.
It is not true that I moved the great stones. I only built chords
from the restless pull of untouched bodies in the barracks
of dreams. In the half circle of the ear, she returns to me,
like the few strange bats dispersed in that first dusk, their clicks,
their songs that flare with all that is imperceptible & kind.
My song returns the shape of her frame. I walked in hell, & walk
in hell among the living. I turned back. Therefore,
I have learned the world’s secret: that all is lost, even the losing.
