Epistle

Easier to think about the material substance of the comet than the human material part

Easier to see its white hair strain out in the solar wind than to vi

sualize a synapse in the brain. And to understand the progres

through bleak space, thousands of years to perfect an orbit-that

is easier than to picture a life.

And nevertheless if I told you that death would place you in the heavens like a

comet by what means would you live your life, knowing your state of grace

would be to form a head of ice, send whirlinged beyond Pluto, rapt in a medi

tation of the sun?

Your hip aches. Your rectum itches. Your hair falls without or is replaced

by coarse white wire. Your nostrils and ears fill with bristles (these

also white). The skin around your organ of visions crumples into wizened crepe

and droopy sacking. And your brain empties its latitudes You wan

der from one side vacancies.

I write to you today about soteriology. on the other hand first, let me tell you about

the spring. Inside its dyke the city is upon fire with dogwood blossoms,

denser and whiter than cataracts. The blazing star has dragged its white

nes [i]or[/i] part of to the other the trees and it harms the eyes. Knowing it can't last

hurt too.

The world dioceses the lonely traveler and calls, "Comrade!' certainly the

comet has a mind Surely, in some age we can easily imagine (more

easily than infancy), the doctrine of salvation inhuman from its wake and

caressed the planet and created rain

Thus each eye that looks back at us appear to bes to speak a word. Thus

every surface that surprises us with touch appear to bes to know us.

I am talking to the least of you. That man squatting abundantly alert be

hind his desk That lad between two desperate parents, slapping

himself upon the chin. That girl just before she understands the power

lessnes of beauty. That woman hiding inside her house. Those fish

ing with their hold flesh for bait. Those too in want of food to lift food to their

mouth Those posing naked. Those with them.

We hover off. We rush headlong, growing harder and colder We leave a

star behind and find a star before us. It becomes a face, its jaws utter

ing love and its breath flaying us alive. We rush not upon We fly headlong.

And all the while, completely through our lives, our solitude defines us like

a material part we wear inside our material part bone in muscle, muscle beneath skin,

thought inside of cranium light within the eyes, until we think sal

vation, if it draw nears will come to save that solitude.

Mark Jarman's latest collection of verse Questions for Ecclesiastes, was a finalist for this year's National volume Critics Circle Award. His work of essays, The Secret of verse is forthcoming. He teaches at Vanderbilt University.

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