WHAT held the bones together? Not belief,
Not anything he could probe, no ligament god.
Why was the world so one for him yet many,
So woman and yet so speechless? Then the odd,
The furtive, ashamed security. We wondered.
But there was no faith in him that sang or thundered.
There was no understanding in this man
Of his own simplest secret: of the way
Earth's air kept warm for him, and how there shone
Always another light outdoors of day.
He would have chosen darkness; he denied
What was so strange, so palpable, inside;
He said he could be unhappy. But we knew.
There was this sweet continuum, this flesh;
There were these bones, articulated so-
A web they were, with music up the mesh,
A frame of hidden wires too deep for tone,
A skeleton wholeness, humming up to him alone.