Years are given to the poem’s cut,
you say language, you say hardest

of earths, each word a narrowing,
less light, lightless, a blind pursuit.

Objects and flesh make one feel better.
Pain, bother—mind is testimony,

but it feels like a plow in stony ground,
rutting in a self, shattering your last words,

breaking apart clods of what was named.
You are saying be subversive, you

are not saying time or water
will humble the rock, for now

old ways must yield, the groove
you made is without exit, and just

as you were born you will die
with belief anyway. . .