END OF THE BOOK


Under the circumstances, Jesus, why can't I get  high?
She tears at the ground, she cries.
On a beach called  Dog  Bay
The water is jaded.
It was there the children ran into the paper  sky
Not a wrinkle or stain in its spread.
They didn't listen to me
And got scared at the edge of the  trees.
There was a drugged woman and a dog
In the grass by a stone gate-house.
Fair trade words like sherry and tea
Had no place in her vocabulary.
Was she any more you than me?

*

See the hypericon is still unfurling.
To show there is no God
Without Mary.
Ciaran thought I was someone else
When I answered the phone.
And I am when the children are gone.
As if only residues of
Waves and particles hung on my pains.
The condition is known to all.
In pain you can't remember health
And in health you forget your pain.
How else did  Israel ruin  Jerusalem?

*

Fever red rivers dispense and collect
The drivel from several directions.
Because we had everything
Backwards when we left home.
The light in our cells is trying to  print
The original inside out.
Trauma is necessary
In this need to repeat, practice and  turn
Your eyes the other way
Where you cannot see the harm--
Only in the action of reversing the  lens…..
One poet holds his spectacles backwards
To read faraway words.

*

Flanked by monks my fear of men  recedes.
But I am just a guest, a woman of the  road.
A guest should feel at home
The way a drinker becomes a thinker
When he is at his least coherent.
A guest must never out-live her  welcome.
Die, or leave—before they want you  gone.
A guest can only guess
What is really going on.
The walls have no ears, the toilets are like  megaphones.
The kitchen is alien
And everyone who lives there is giving  her
Anything she needs, there is no  question
Of meanness, but a guest must leave her  host
In order to remain a guest.
God:  "This far shall you  come and no farther."