59.

Silent devotion at first light, wind

Breath on the ankles, the frost in the stone

Numb to the touch. The canticles of loss

Are buried with the revolution. That love

Couldn’t be left alone, even if they are

Traces in the noise and smoke of a world

More given to deafness and poison.

It was always hard on the knees to pray,

Harder to do when eye and brain wandered

Errant, truant, spent before the sun

Would rise and raze the shaky steeple,

The crumbling mill, the soul. And so as I go

To Paris, I wonder whether the monks would take me

For a retreat in and from the city I love.