Crouched on the Ark, you Lord sit up late reading, inconsolable,
Pushing open the paper scraps, you don’t get tired, teeth made to ink and
Graphite, walled in, you are promised—inimical, swollen, feral, you Lord, pinned,

Turn to the wall and pray, you turn to the Lord and pray, who can understand it,
Outside, in a fold of borrowed Yarmulkes, someone speaking, a home rebuilt,
Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet,

What they have defiled, let them put away their thresholds and doorposts, who will live
Among you forever, historical facts, the earliest layers date from the reconstruction
Of the Temple in the first century BCE., and are

Made from blocks weighing over one hundred tons; over that, a layer
Built when Hadrian was king, and Arab masonry rests on that, to
Think, the Resurrection must have been within one ½ mile of here, I’m

Standing on rocks that are on top of rocks on top of rocks on which the important
Dead might have walked. Son of man, sit on the steps and rest your groceries,
Mutter, turn from your centuries of stony sleep, and pray, a chrysalis,

A profession of loss, I’d kill you too to keep it this way, surely we look
At the bottom of the sea, that is, think about it, blind above
The waves, surely revelation let loose on the anarchy that bore it.