Close Study

Above me they lay the stones for the courtyard
and the columns for holding up the cluster and
even farther up they painted with an inky blue
brush the contours of a sky without stars. I saw
none of this, during all my days in the earth, but
the stench of the soil's vibrations curling up over
my eyelids and down into my nostrils deep yet
tender. The tap of the chisel against granite
by the sculptor, so weary already of time
wearing away the stone above my chest
and the chipped off cliffside on which now
lay the body of his beloved, his hand curled
around his left breast, upturned eye glancing,
lazily, toward the stars as if infinity was but
a dinner napkin. The other hand clasped close
to his buttocks, as if caught, cruelly, in a wave
of amber in his bedroom. I will remain here,
painting the world above into the canvas
of my voided mind, until
these contours of the brain
shall sift the rubble of my
broken years back into the
warm awareness of this soiled
soil, and drink again from the
liquor
of this inward spouting aquifer.