The Church of Assumption

after T. S. Eliot

Because they said we must be paired—
two by two,
like scared animals before the great ark of resplendent joy—
but I stood alone at the threshold,
not sorrowing, unconvinced.

Because they said the beach was good.
But I have known the sting of salt on wounded skin,
the itch of sand in the soul’s machinery.
Because they said the body is an abomination—
but I once saw an angel turn its collar up against the wind.

And because we are told:
money, like bread, must be broken to live.
But I have thrived eating silence in the hallway of dawn.
Retire, they said, as if rest were a reward
and not a waiting room.

So that’s why I’m asking
if we must live
practicing
the last page of the script
each and every day
of youth and beyond—
the body rehearsing collapse,
the mind pacing the perimeter of its cage.

Family: foundation.
Work: the lash.
Joy: universal.
The call must be returned.
No pain, no gain.
(And yet some wounds never bloom.)

Send me the artist drunk on today.
Yes to the doomed romantic.
Join me in the shade under the pear tree
where the cat treads slowly as on holy ground.
Man—ah man—
why from a Fall, not a climb,
or a mutation, not a spark?

Medicine: the savior.
Death: the curtain.
Trump: the madman.
Science: the assassin.
God: the ghost.
Suicide: the shame.
The Senate: a puppet theatre of hands run by hands.

Where does it end, this litany of ready-made truths?
Why must we live by aphorism
like rats in a saccharine maze?

Do not read this
as an equation.
The birds and bees—
ask them about petals too!
Sex now happens on the dotted line—
The sex we no longer have.

A campfire at dusk can melt the gold leaf of scripture.
Reality crumbles like pine needles beneath wet boots.

Because they said
Russia is evil.
But maps do not bleed. People do.
East and West are not rivals,
but weary pilgrims trading shoes.
A mirror cracked
still shows the face.

And I—
I am no longer rowing upstream,
dead tired of our language
with its slogans, binaries, and stained-glass certainties.
I am too untranslatable.

Stepping ashore,
naked as unlearning,
I begin again, unnamed.
Baptized not in belief,
but in the river edging
outside the church of assumption,
I bravely bear the curse of the free.