I never noticed his knuckles
But then it seemed any of the ruddy indices
Of his body might have given me a clue, as if there were
clues to be found
And he was composed of them solely, though one, among the
others
Which had had him hold on, gave out,
Where I thought to moor
The first attitude of that early afternoon.
The past perfect and the present perfect compounded:
“he’s always been…,” and I’d thought, “no, he had always
been”,
But the words stuck in my throat.
Now, as then, when one point in time lobs itself forward,
And you fail to admire the colors left in its wake,
The parabola is all too clear, its bent too definite,
Its trajectory too perfected.
He was Iscoceles with two obtuse angles,
Or the palimpsest, whose faded scrawl vies with the all too
decipherable:
Of the two we read what appears to be read, what was written
lately,
What is spaced generously on the blistering parchment.
Help us to read again and to right the angles
But also to love the hidden, the disjointed, that most felt,
Most sweet, most joyful, most gentle,
Handsome and quiet young man who often held his gaze
To the ground while in his head he cupped the silt of
genius.
I imagine his knuckles were imperfect and I ask not which or
why,
The conceit has run its course.
