but-for-the-grace:

for Joy

is what I wanted to write.
There was such a song!
A song for your kneebones,
a song for your ribs,
those delicate trees that bury your heart;
a song for your bookshelf
where twenty hand-blown ducks sit in a Venetian row;
a song for your dress-up high heels,
your fire-red skate board,
your twenty grubby fingers,
the pink knitting that you start
and never quite finish;
your poster paint pictures,
all angels making a face,
a song for your laughter
that keeps wiggling a spoon in my sleep.

Even a song for your night
as during last summer’s heat wave
where your fever stuck at 104 for two weeks,
where you slept, head on the window sill,
lips as dry as old erasers, your thirst
shimmering and heavy as I spooned water in,
your eyes shut on the thumping June bugs,
the lips moving, mumbling,
sending letters to the stars.
Dreaming, dreaming,
your body a boat,
rocked by your life and my death.
Your fists wound like a ball,
little fetus, little snail,
carrying a rage, a leftover rage
I cannot undo.

Even a song for your flight
where you fell from the neighbor’s tree hut,
where you thought you were walking onto solid blue air,
you thought, why not?
and then, you simply left the boards behind
and stepped out into the dust.

O little Icarus,
you chewed on a cloud, you bit the sun
and came tumbling down, head first,
not into the sea, but hard
on the hard packed gravel.
You fell on your eye. You fell on your chin.
What a shiner! What a faint you had
and then crawled home,
a knocked-out humpty dumpty
in my arms.

O humpty-dumpty girl,
I named you Joy.
That’s someone’s song all by itself.
In the naming of you I named
all the things you are…
except the ditch
where I left you once,
like an old root that wouldn’t take hold,
that ditch where I left you
while I sailed off in madness
over the buildings and under my umbrella,
sailed off for three years
so that the first candle
and the second candle
and the third candle
burned down alone on your birthday cake.
That ditch I want so much to forget
and that you try each day to forget.

Even here in your school portrait
where you repeat third grade,
caught in the need not to grow—
that little prison—
even here you keep up the barrier
with a smile that dies afraid
as it hides your crooked front tooth.
Joy, I call you
and yet your eyes just here
with their shades half-drawn over the gunsights,
over your gigantic knowledge,
over the little blue fish who dart back and forth,
over different streets, the strange rooms,
other people’s chairs, other people’s food,
ask, “Why was I shut in the cellar?”

And I’ve got words,
words that dog my heels,
words for sale you might say,
and multiplication cards and cursive writing
that you ignore to teach my fingers
the cat’s cradle and the witch’s broom.
Yes! I have instructions before dinner
and hugs after dinner and still those eyes—
away, away,
asking for hymns…
without guilt.

And I can only say
a little uncomplicated hymn
is what I wanted to write
and yet I find only your name.
There was such a song,
but it’s bruised.
It’s not mine.

You will jump to it someday
as you will jump out of the pitch of this house.
It will be a holiday, a parade, a fiesta!
Then you’ll fly.
You’ll really fly.
After that you’ll, quite simply, quite calmly
make your own stones, your own floor plan,
your own sound.

I wanted to write such a poem
with such musics, such guitars going;
I tried at the teeth of sound
to draw up such legions of noise;
I tried at the breakwater
to catch the star off each ship;
and at the closing of hands
I looked for their houses
and silences.
I found just one.

          you were mine
          and I lent you out.

I look for uncomplicated hymns
but love has none.

(Source: gematriya)