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

      Since writing began

      And before that as songs

      Or poems people memorized

      And recited aloud

      When someone asked: “What is life?”

The things that die

      Do not die,

      Or they die briefly

      To be born again

      In the Book.

      Did you think

      You would see

      The loved one again

      In this world

      Or in some other?

      No, that cannot happen.

      But we have been

      Gathering, all of us,

      The scattered remnants

      Of the loved one

      Since the beginning.

      In Egypt, the loved

      One is not in the pyramids

      But in the poem

      Carved in stone

      About the lover’s lips

      And eyes.

      In the igloo

      The poem gathers

      The dark hair of the beloved.

      All the poems of the world

      Have been gathering the beloved’s

      Body against your loss.

      Read in the Book. Open

      Your eyes and your heart;

      Open your voice.

      The beloved

      Is there and was never lost.

I read the Book for years

      And never understood a word.

      Scrawled in its margins.

      Wrote my own versions

      Of what I read there,

      But never got a thing right.

      Didn’t understand that each

      Poem was a magic spell.

      Was a voice,

      And under that voice: an echo

      That was the spell.

      As if each poem clearly spoke

      The word “Death”

      And the echo said “Life.”

      Echo roiling the poem’s surface

      As the angel was said

      To trouble the waters

      Of Bethesda’s pool in Jerusalem

      So that the first person

      To enter the water

      After the angel had been there

      Was healed.

I’ve known grief. I don’t

      Take it lightly. Know how

      It gnaws your bones hollow

      So you’re afraid to stand up,

      Afraid the lightest wind will

      Knock you over, blow you away.

      But maybe the wind is supposed

      To blow right through you;

      Maybe you’re a tree in winter

      And your poem translates

      That cold wind into song.