Impassed

The withered breast

With eyes of love

Do we look at gifts

Of death the eyes

Of a God whose

Gaze freezes red shift

In our veins until

The corpse of a sac

Wriggling calls out

Its new name having

Passed that thresh-

hold impassed

Aren’t we embodying it

To meet this way

In a grave summarizing time

As such crouched because

No one is free

From pain so sing

With me a song

Whose words are chronic

Weaning the lover back

From the gradual black

Red shift frozen before

Life began death began

To take away my love from me

Singing in a cadence

Of the unthinkable.

--for Beth Murray, composed spring 2012