Despite Everything

by G. E. Schwartz

Strange, in the end: this world unworded word I leave unsaid;
Midday’s made blaze, praise-phrase of fires; night’s blonde-veined black outspread.
Nothing so precious, yet each breath brims hymn in the lung—
Grass touched, love mouthed; dusk-hush where childlike fading songs are sung.
Others will come with my same heart, same startle at the sky,
Turn at their name: flame in the frame of clouds that pass and cry.
Always a couple’s tremble; first light bright rite of dawn begun;
Always the waters, winds, and light; none passes but the one.

Why then this fear? the psyche’s fox gnaws bone and hidden thread;
War’s clang, shame’s brand; the mind’s confined to what the dead have said.
Joy leaks like wine—fine, sly—through grief’s split cup; the sea’s increase
Breaks thirst to birth; from salt vaults rise green syllables of peace.
Bag on the back, black lack of sleep still under heaven’s blue
I breathe thank you through wound and rune the Beautiful breaks through.