print versionMICHAEL C. PETERSON
[For fury the Penitent may say]
For fury the Penitent may say, My Lord, if discretion
be the better part of valor then let me
be the screen door, and beyond it, the parade
rolling forth, heat and wheel, equal
among themselves, a same compressive thing,
grandeur through the street.
But all things being equal, the heat the wheel—
and this includes the heart—burn out
break down, what’s left. Not the quiet, it must
be loud. It must answer to whatever
death by becoming whatever of it—not itself
but something in the style of light if
light could be its sound, my tonguing like the
clapper of a bell, its word worn round.
For sleep the Penitent will say, My Lord, make me
the tributary, the canal, the sluice and its
solutions pouring out, the folio sheet halved and
folded, the other body next to me, a lathe
turning over. I keep the world up with my
raggedness. I try to shut the summer down.
I bellowed bead by bead, opaque, mother–
strand, strung like fish, I did it twice.
O my mother, incorruptible, these words they
rise to stand outside me, speak
against me like a heart I never recognize or see,
me—make me the pain fixed to one place.
So For pain the Penitent—My Lord, just so, just so.
Frontier becomes me and its place,
obediently cold. Glorify the lung, the nose that
gives to it the pine. The unruly town
inside a forest, now dry. Glorify the eye and salt
that gives to it the command. The silent
town beside the sea, its blue ebb. Glorify the rule
that keeps me here which gives the brain
no say. Water in water out. Give me say, let me
thrive again. O Jesu. O Jesu thou. Give. 
[For fury the Penitent may say]
[So long on Tantrum now]
[Something of occupation]
[When gluttony is less than ruinous]