Radiance versus Ordinary Light

Meanwhile the sea moves uneasily, like a man who

suspects what the room reels with as he rises into it

is violation—his own: he touches the bruises at each

shoulder and, on his chest,

the larger bruise, star-shaped,

a flawed star, or hand, though he remembers no hands,

has tried—can't remember . . .

That kind of rhythm to it,

even to the roughest surf there's a rhythm findable,

which is why we keep coming here, to find it, or that's

what we say. We dive in and, as usual,

the swimming

feels like that swimming the mind does in the wake

of transgression, how the instinct to panic at first

slackens that much more quickly, if you don't

look back. Regret,

like pity, changes nothing really, we

say to ourselves and, less often, to each other, each time

swimming a bit farther,

leaving the shore the way

the water—in its own watered, of course, version

of semaphore–keeps leaving the subject out, flashing

Why should it matter now and Why,

why shouldn 't it,

as the waves beat harder, hard against us, until that's

how we like it, I'll break your heart, break mine.

HALLELUJAHANYWAY