after brueghel

the antecedent
burning
its trial transcript
repercussion
of the azalea’s
gift-lease
in autumn
the slow meters
(“old voice”)
vetted for tourism’s
blurred syllable
contrapuntal
(if not discrete)
belaying
the adjectives
& all their vows
vows I woke from
as for some
milk the honey
gestured towards
some
nourishment
among the ashes

sobriety calendar

the glass comma
bearing its pause

out before it,
like the lamp
it somehow
silences—

a better story,
even the April ice
kneels into
it, as if listening—

as if in unknowing
generosity
(the generosity
of unknowing)—

& how the body
processes
all it isn’t,
tangent to all it is

the pause the body
includes, drapes
its crude self
around—

its body-self—

still puzzled
by the fact of glass,
its
backlit vortices—

prolepsis

as a model of must—

dispersed between
examples,
the truth
remains doubled—

anonymous,
the voice
directs its warrant,

lends its human
half—
its outer surgery—

to the tension
that is
nothing’s
ulterior pattern—

the process
by which the stone
is rolled away,

its must
vs. its mercy—

& the order—
strewn amid frost,
agented inside
a query’s strict

decay, unabsolved—

nor of contempt
this compact body—