Throng of eyes,

myriad, at sunken retina depth: the image

of the great, imageless one,

moored within.

Mantis-lunged, we,

the hirelings, alive in juniper and rubble,

broke the flat bread

that went with us, we

were steps, wandered

into blindness, we knew by then

how to breathe ourselves along

to nothing.

Something lost

became

something to be found.

A name,

followed through the dust

of all that veering, did not ever

divulge its sound. The mountain

was the spoor

by which an animal pain

hunted itself home.

All night

I read the braille wounds

on the inner wall

of your cry, and at the brink

of the thick, millennial morning, climbed up

into you again, where all

my bones began

beating and

beating the heart-drum

to shreds.