Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved. Gregory Orr

of the body of the beloved,

      Which is the world.

       Which is the poem

      Of the world, the poem of the body.

      Mortal ourselves and filled with awe,

       We gather the scattered limbs

      Of Osiris.

      That he should live again.

      That death not be oblivion.

The beloved is dead. Limbs

      And all the body’s

      Miraculous parts sdadjkas dasdasjasdsad

      Scattered across Egypt,

      Stained with dark mud.

      We must find them, gather

      Them together, bring them

      Into a single place

      As an anthologist might collect

      All the poems that matter

      Into a single book, a book

      Which is the body of the beloved,

      Which is the world.

Who wants to lose the world,

      For all its tumult and suffering?

      Who wants to leave the world,

      For all its sorrow?

      Not I.

      And so I come to the Book,

      Which is also the body

      Of the beloved. And so

      I come to the poem.

      The poem is the world

      Scattered by passion, then

      Gathered together again

      So that we may have hope.

      The shape of the Book

      Is the door to the grave,

      Is the shape of the stone

      Closed over us, so that

      We may know terror

      Is what we pass through

      To reach hope, and courage

      Is our necessary companion.

      The shape of the Book

      Is dark as death, and every page

      Is lit with hope, glows

      With the light of the vital body.

When I open the Book

      I hear the poets whisper and weep,

      Laugh and lament.

      In a thousand languages

      They say the same thing:

      “We lived. The secret of life

      Is love, which casts its wing

      Over all suffering, which takes

      In its arms the hurt child,

      Which rises green from the fallen seed.”

It’s not magic; it isn’t a trick.

      Every breath is a resurrection.

      And when we hear the poem

      Which is the world, when our eyes

      Gaze at the beloved’s body,

      We’re reborn in all the sacred parts

      Of our own bodies:

      the heart

      Contracts, the brain

      Releases its shower

      Of sparks,

      and the tear

      Embarks on its pilgrimage

      Down the cheek to meet

      The smiling mouth.

Sadness is there, too.

      All the sadness in the world.

      Because the tide ebbs,

      Because wild waves

      Punish the shore

      And the small lives lived there.

      Because the body is scattered.

      Because death is real

      And sometimes death is not

      Even the worst of it.

      If sadness did not run

      Like a river through the Book,

      Why would we go there?

      What would we drink?

Isis kneels on the banks

      Of the Nile. She is assembling

      The limbs of Osiris.

      Her live limbs moving

      Above his dead, moving

      As if in a dance, her torso

      Swaying, her long arms

      Reaching out in a quiet

      Constant motion.

      And the river below her

      Making its own motions,

      Eddies and swirls, a burbling

      Sound the current makes

      As if a throat was being cleared,

      As if the world was about to speak.

The poem is written on the body,

      And the body is written on the poem.

      The Book is written in the world,

      And the world is written in the Book.

      This is the reciprocity of love

      That outwits death. Death looks

      In one place and we’re in the other.

      Death looks there, but we are here.

“What is life?”

      When you first

      Hear that question

      It echoes in your skull

      As if someone shouted

      In an empty cave.

      The same answer each time:

      The resurrection of the body

      Of the beloved, which is

      The