[IT'S BEEN TWO THOUSAND YEARS NOW]

It's been two thousand years now that, with a wounded leg,

the god's amazing loves have dragged along.

He has aged. Soon

he won't be noticed except from way up in a plane

in the markings of wheat

that yield the trace

of an ancient sanctuary.

He solicits a language of caresses,

open pasture, available bodies,

and the words refuse, and this elsewhere is already in his death

except for a slender purple flower under the sun.

He can still act the god all around,

evening's worn heart.

He guesses the flower will slip

fragile

from one century to the next with its prayer.