We must be lost in stone
in water
into stone
be quenched
in fire, dissolved and stoned
in fire
We must be numbed
in stone
to wood, in wood’s
stone jelly boned
be whet
in air, in air’s fierce
drownings fired
Our beauties must be charred in wood
through stone, through cutting water
leafed
We must descend through stone’s
soft foot, through sear and atom honed
of nothing, out of nothing stained
to stone
Our hands must sprout
from starfish stone, from rain
our fingers and from rain
and stone’s dissolve of air
our breathing
and blood’s breathing
beat to hair
From leaf and water seal
to wood
in bone, in bone’s
red leafing
fire
the nostril into brain
The eye must beat
in lizard light, in stone
into the head’s webbed bone
That stone enough be loss to start the lung.
Used with permission of Princeton University Press, from Corrupted into Song: The Complete Poems of Alvin Feinman, edited by Deborah Dorfman, 2016; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.