After the Leaving

They said he rose.
That something lifted from the hill
and entered light.

It may have looked that way.
Distance can do that.
So can need.

What stayed was this:
the ground,
the trees holding their shape,
the air not altered in any way
you could name.

No dove came down.
No fire.
Only the ordinary sky
continuing as before.

We were told to wait.
That something would follow.
A sign.
A force.
A voice that would make it clear
what all this had been for.

We waited.

Time passed in the usual manner.
Days took their place among days.
The world did not incline toward us.
It did not refuse us either.

Nothing arrived.

The words remained for a while.
They had weight at first.
We spoke them carefully,
as if they might hold something in place.

Then less carefully.
Then not at all.

It became difficult
to say what we meant by them.

The garden was always elsewhere.
The gate closed before we reached it.
Angels belonged to paintings
and to people who needed them.

What we had
was this:

the body,
liable to fail;
the mind,
liable to invent;
the long movement of time
carrying everything
away from its beginning.

We tried to believe
there was a return built into it.

There isn’t.

There is no fire waiting in the air
to make sense of things.
No moment when the account is settled
and the losses explained.

Only the continuation.

Fields growing what they grow.
Weather passing over them.
People speaking, leaving,
not returning.

You can call this exile
if you need a word.

Or simply life,
without the promise
that once made it bearable.

Still, we go on.

Not because it leads somewhere.
Not because it is watched.

Because there is no alternative
to continuing
while you are able.

And if there is a grace in it,
it is not given.

It is made,
briefly,
by what we do
with one another
before the light goes.