HEARING
Mornings after we gave up words, we still loved
to lie and graze the day awakewatching our old chit-chat thatch the street like rain.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon
now the dead grow sound limbs to stand upon
nourished by discourse we once loved.
In their sodden crypts they sigh awake
solitary, listening to the rain
heartened by our lost and rousing homilies—the rain
engaging vacant brains it falls upon
until everyone we love or once loved
is dying tonight or lying still awake
listening, for our sake, as rain rains the dead awake.
There’s something diplomatic about rain
strewing cool phrase upon cool phrase upon . . .
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
has held words they loved from rain; I’m held awake
by heavy sentences the rain might lay upon them.
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