from Quarantine

LAUDS Somehow I am sturdier, more shore than sea-spray as I thicken through the bedroom door. I gleam of sickness. You give me morning, Lord, as you give earthquake to all architecture. I can forget. You put that sugar in the melon’s breath, and it is wet with what you are. (I, too, ferment.) You rub the hum and simple warmth of summer from afar into the hips of insects and of everything. I can forget. And like the sea, one more machine without a memory, I don’t believe that you made me. PRIME