Hymn

Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus

                                    – Livy

We are like strangers in the wild places. We watch

the deer swinging the intricate velvet from its antlers, never knowing

we are only as immense as what we shed in the dance.

The bride and bridegroom stand at the altar. Each thing

learned in mercy has as river in it. It holds the cargo

of a thousand crafts of fire that went down at evening.

We can neither endure our misfortunes nor face

the remedies needed to cure them. The fawns move

through the forest, and we move through the ruins of the dance.

Like Job, the mourner lays his head on the cold oak

of the table. His heart is a hundred calla lilies

under the muck of the river, opening before evening.

We think there is another shore. We stand with the new life

like a mooring rope across our shoulders, never guessing

that the staying is the freightage of the dance.

Orpheus turned to see his Eurydice gone. The Furies tore him

into pieces. The sun, he said, I will worship the sun.

But something in his ruin cried out for evening, evening, evening.

The wrens build at dusk. Friends, I love their moss-dressed

nests twisting in the pitch of the rafters, for they have taught me

that the ruins of the dance are the dance.