XXXI.

When god sank in my heart
to sleep awhile, as if
a brother’d come to stay,
in the rhythm he came walking,
stealing from his passage in the desert,
he floated towards
the whole world’s Israel.
And god became a total heart
(that is the absolute perfection!)
And hung upon a tree until
the senses also died,
And born of womb and
Palestine’s abstractions,
the dying god who walked
towards the center of the earth
became the cataclysmic flame
and burnt out all the darkness.

robert cole-sackett