Little Furnace

—Once more the poem woke me up, the dark poem. I was ready for it; he was sleeping, and across the cabin, the small furnace lit and re-lit itself—the flame a yellow “tongue” again, the metal benignly hard again; and a thousand insects outside called and made me nothing; moonlight streamed inside as if it had been ... I looked around, I thought of the lower wisdom, spirit held by matter: Mary, white as a sand dollar, and Christ, his sticky halo tilted— oh, to get behind it! The world had been created to comprehend itself as matter: table, the torn veils of spiders ... Even consciousness— missing my love— was matter, the metal box of a furnace. As the obligated flame, so burned my life ... What is the meaning of this suffering I asked and the voice—not Christ but between us— said you are the meaning. No no, I replied, That is the shape, what is the meaning. You are the meaning, it said—