Agnus Dei
(“Adagio for Strings”—Samuel Barber)

Faithful to its own,
its clipped calligraphy and breathless narratives,
the moon’s already shedding every fabric
of sorrows.
Like a fox the color of deep, amber water,
it seeks shelter among
its own kind.

Consider what impact, what junctures, the subtle weight
of desolation.
Its rubbed-away edges wrapped in
damages.
Out of knuckled fists and vengeance, out of smolder
and trembling,
there is simply this—for a brief time there is no
end.
No beginning.

Somewhere, newly calm,
dawn is lifting its bare arms through strata
of darkness.
You think of white jade, the shift of past tense
to the present,
when the great towers of a city,
before they rise again,
become a
hush,
the inflorescence of a single, blue
iris.

Resurrection
and the keen of it.
You think of time before time, as light grows clarified,
grows redeemed,
as when the hidden light within honey
brims
from a thousand
combs.