Water & Fire

Litany of ice, I know the names of
     all of your shards, silver splinters

of mirrors weeping who you were, bleeding
     tears of tarnished coffers captured

in someone else’s war, yards of fine Jew
     linen folding in its arms charred

ivory & gold fillings, someone else’s
     scars, though killing is an art, one

that melts the seals of its death’s cold warrants
     pushing out onto currents those

               Stone & Ice

floes no one knows or recognizes, your
     soul’s jettisoned cargo, those parts

of former Selves that have far to go on
     this Nile northerly, there blows the

nose of old Osiris, below the high
     watermark the bulk of his toes

and his cock, and where they go, your own could
     talk, telling of how a darkness

of tragedy is what you have become
     made from the most beautiful parts.