For Robert, His Caprices #95

by Pierre Joris

which has
“The priests say that’s what
purgatory’s for,
to end the game
and settle up the score.”

I don’t agree with the priests,
purgatory’s not
the end of the game,

in fact, purgatory’s all
there is, heaven & hell
have fallen away or

never were, & we are
where we always were
& will be:

smack in the middle,
the in–between that is us
in the world

& the world in us,
misnamed by said priests, it is
what the poet Ibn Arabi called the

barzakh, this caprice
on Easter Sunday 2019,
New Orleans.