For Jack Gilbert

The dying poet is sitting on the roof of the chapel
watching the sun work its way
across the olive groves and the Mediterranean.
As a young man he thought of grace as luminosity,
those moments like quicksilver. The girl’s face
the first time she came. Or the chance encounter
that turned into a night of dancing and drinking
and early-late coffee, a plate of eggs, cigarettes
on her door step. As a young man, he thought solace
was the silhouette of a French cathedral.
Or the fortress built on the side of a cliff, immaculate
in its precision and danger. Or, Shakespeare.
Now, that he is older,
he thinks the luminous only obscures the real grace.
The afternoon when he couldn’t get hard
so they talked for five hours instead. Or the long car ride
past the endless tobacco fields and the ruined homesteads,
the plantations devoured by nature. The forgotten lines of poetry
that she would read to him over the phone
at two P.M. on a Tuesday in October.
He knows that grief is like the moldering rooms
of those plantations, emptied of furniture and ornamentation.
And he understands that there is no solace.
That he would gladly sacrifice Notre Dame
for five more lines of poetry
read to him with the thoughtless ease of dwindling love
while the autumn sun comes through the window,
frail, full of dancing dust, and she exposes her ribs
to accept the offering like a cat, waking.

As night settles, he realizes the purity of the day‘s light,
finally, in its absence.