They only want you to think
there isn’t a script: that buildup
from behind-the-scenes confession
to crestfallen admission, to wrath
then tears as cameras twist from face
to eager face in the audience? That’s not
natural outburst— and if for some
unfathomable reason that has become
a credible picture of the soul’s
wilderness, take me away now
and throw away the key. I’d rather be
a monk sentenced to celibacy, confined
to a musty carrel within a library,
assigned to a lifetime of illustrating
page after page: nightshade, monkshood,
bitter oleander, blue cohosh. World
ungraspable except in pieces,
world of unseen danger, unfinished
psalms and lamentations: your dust
powders an edge and for a moment
its parts shine almost like a halo.
In response to Via Negativa: Against Nature.