My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. —1 Cor 4:4
i.
He stands before the mountain
and confesses, “I do not know
the woman I love. I know her less
than I ever did; and I know
that there was a time when she wanted
to be known. But now she is content
to offer me only the bland and inscrutable
face of a landscape that punishes
neglect and betrayal; that turns its
beauty into a wall of brutal silence.
How does she do this? She says
it is over, and I am left bereft,
restless, while she sleeps the long
sleep of peace and satisfaction.”
ii.
The things he envies: Item:
landscapes stubbornly dramatic
as all things brought to beautiful boil
by the natural upheavals of the world.
Item: the ability to wake each morning
to mist and churning foam, and the scent
of sulfur in the air. Item: those like
her who can collapse into their catastrophes,
turning the world into spectators,
appalling all into pity for their pain
and gratitude for their genius.
iii.
He envies, too, the idea of an island
with its mountains of sheltering green,
the anomie of the messy history of place:
the markers of ownership and the markers
of the dead. He envies the scent
of the fecund earth thick with his people’s
blood. Above all, he envies that woman
her capacity to close the door on love,
to sleep soundly as an escape,
to turn even his tender reaching hand
into a monstrosity.