Answer
For which you'll study the debris-strewn intersections
and stricken faces your remaining days, may they lengthen,
as if some grain of disaster still hovered there,
and you, having isolated it, work at an antidote.
Guesses you hazard: capsule of powdered glass, treatment plan
by which squad lights widen irises, and everything seen
through them thereafter shines. In this shimmer,
you develop your theorem of a fixed measure
of suffering, that there is now no more or less torment
than was or will be, but it wanders. Here a woman
is hurt with pliers. Here the killer watches a comedy.
You call it No Accident, and it sustains you,
even thrown through a windshield, stones in your mouth,
even when you drift, combing each tatter of newsprint for what?
Winning numbers? The blazing script of your own name?
You glimpse it in footprints, whatever direction, in road signs
and outdoor advertisements, especially in the eyes of animals
frightened at night: the startling liquid that washes us
ceaselessly, grasses springing back at each step.
Something, you know, is not forthcoming. Something,
like God, is everywhere but hidden, like skin under clothes.
(originally appeared in Black Warrior Review)
