A DETAIL OF GRAVITY
Antonio Jocson
Because the earth demands it toll, his body
falls with the simplicity of any other weight,
the body half-doubled over, a little folded
with the limp, oblique angles of the dead.
You would think a man so holy might be
lighter, thin as he was, the very sky of
a kingdom supporting his skin awash to hues
of April overcasts and after-images of
sunlight.
You would think that he might have even
wafted down from his perch, unpinned by
angels, and that the ground might receive him
with all the hush of a day becoming evening.
As it is, another carpenter used a hammer
(sashed now to his waist), and with someone
other, guides the scourged body down
all iron mined out of its hands and feet.
We look on him whom we have pierced.
We claim him as he is, every inch of heaviness
coming to hear upon our summoned selves,
coming to rest in our arms and garments.
Here then, is our faith in gravity, for it
brings a god among us, close as the air,
limbs forked into all directions as lightning
and here we are: we can touch him.
Language like the darkened afternoons recedes,
yet gestures still embrace this foot that
bleeds;
and see now hoe the wound’s airy hollow
has caught the world at its purest sorrow.
(1993)
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