I look at paintings
                                                    I work on another poem
Agnes Martin made
                                                    with a ruler and pencil
and I think about
                                                    compulsory repetition
the grid as endgame
                                                    helpless entrapment
not a spiritual practice
                                                    or meditative lyric
but the mind’s limit
                                                    iterated constantly
I know she believed
                                                    satisfaction impossible
art is better hungry
                                                    but I remember how
before I became ill
                                                    I could open my mouth
I could eat without fear
                                                    I could be nourished
my lover could enter me
                                                    until illness entered me
and I desired nothing else
                                                    more deeply than health