I.
He speaks to me so that my whole
         drift gathers to his verse:
the page like a gravestone, his terse
         stanzas building epitaphs
that draw me to my soul—
         which I believe in even as the drafts
of disbelief shiver its poor tatters.

Though I am a shredding of other matters,
         distracted to smithereens,
he figures it to me: he has a means
         to rise lost to my longing, save
for his tuning of the sinews’ tether,