Love's Last
Love's last urgency is earth
and grief is all gravity
and the long fall always
back to earliest hours
that exist nowhere
but in one's brain.
From the hard-packed
pile of old-mown grass,
from boredom, from pain,
a boy's random slash
unlocks a dark ardor
of angry bees
that link the trees
and block his way home.
I like to hold him holding me,
mystery mastering fear,
so young, standing unstung
under what survives of sky.
I learned too late how to live.
Child, teach me how to die.
Copyright Credit: Christian Wiman, "Love’s Last" from Once in the West. Copyright © 2014 by Christian Wiman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Source: Once in the West (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2014)