brothers

(being a conversation in eight poems between an aged Lucifer and God, though only Lucifer is heard. The time is long after.) 1 invitation come coil with me here in creation’s bed among the twigs and ribbons of the past. i have grown old remembering the garden, the hum of the great cats moving into language, the sweet fume of the man’s rib as it rose up and began to walk. it was all glory then, the winged creatures leaping like angels, the oceans claiming their own. let us rest here a time like two old brothers who watched it happen and wondered what it meant. 2 how great Thou art listen. You are beyond even Your own understanding. that rib and rain and clay in all its pride, its unsteady dominion, is not what you believed You were, but it is what You are; in your own image as some lexicographer supposed. the face, both he and she, the odd ambition, the desire to reach beyond the stars is You. All You, all You the loneliness, the perfect imperfection. 3 as for myself less snake than angel less angel than man how come i to this serpent’s understanding? watching creation from a hood of leaves i have foreseen the evening of the world. as sure as she the breast of Yourself separated out and made to bear, as sure as her returning, i too am blessed with the one gift You cherish; to feel the living move in me and to be unafraid. 4 in my own defense what could I choose but to slide along behind them, they whose only sin was being their father’s children? as they stood with their backs to the garden, a new and terrible luster burning their eyes, only You could have called their ineffable names, only in their fever could they have failed to hear. 5 the road led from delight into delight. into the sharp edge of seasons, into the sweet puff of bread baking, the warm vale of sheet and sweat after love, the tinny newborn cry of calf and cormorant and humankind. and pain, of course, always there was some bleeding, but forbid me not my meditation on the outer world before the rest of it, before the bruising of his heel, my head, and so forth. 6 “the silence of God is God.” —Carolyn Forche tell me, tell us why in the confusion of a mountain of babies stacked like cordwood, of limbs walking away from each other, of tongues bitten through by the language of assault, tell me, tell us why You neither raised your hand Nor turned away, tell us why You watched the excommunication of That world and You said nothing. 7 still there is mercy, there is grace how otherwise could I have come to this marble spinning in space propelled by the great thumb of the universe? how otherwise could the two roads of this tongue converge into a single certitude? how otherwise could I, a sleek old traveler, curl one day safe and still beside YOU at Your feet, perhaps, but, amen, Yours. 8 “.........is God.” so. having no need to speak You sent Your tongue splintered into angels. even i, with my little piece of it have said too much. to ask You to explain is to deny You. before the word You were. You kiss my brother mouth. the rest is silence.