PETER GRANDBOIS

The sting of the finite

 “I do not know [but] that the devil goes about in my likeness to do any hurt."—Sarah Osborne (1643-1692)

You do not have to be haunted
to forget your boots before

running through television snow,
or become a door blown open

by wind, or shove the ones you love
over the bannister and down

the spiral staircase at midnight.

You do not have to be dead
to summon friends by false names,

luring them to unsound bridges,
or call crows to weave pieces

of another life into nests
of regret that rest gently

on their unsteady heads.   

The seasons where we are lost,
trapped deep in the forest

of ourselves while the moon sharpens
its edges, bear counting. 

Don’t rely on lessons learned from frost
that beards the trees in winter,

like a veil over the face of God.
This body is your own.
 
 

The biggest problems come from being

“Darkness, my sole light! Death’s shadows, so clear to me! Take me! Take me to live with you! I am no longer fit to look to gods for help, no, nor mortals neither.” —Ajax, from Ajax by Sophocles

After night sinks into
its private stillness,

and you stand before a mirror
turned the wrong way, 

remember that the world, too,
is exhausted, having devoured

everything it could from sky.
You’ll need to look elsewhere

for something to hold you
together, lavender ice cream, 

perhaps, or the neighbor’s cat.
Considering how often

we must reinvent ourselves,
how many times we try to speak

the silent language of the Absent,
it’s no wonder we choose to stumble
away from the one story worth telling.