The Poet’s Soul

Perhaps I have this kind of life

where feeling does not arrive cleanly.

In the same hour
there is something like joy,
and something like pain.

They do not take turns.

They stand together
in the body.

I used to think
the soul wanted purity,
some quiet place
untouched.

But that is not true.

It wants rest.

Sometimes
it imagines this as God.

More often
it is simpler than that.

The body beside mine.
Her breathing
in the dark.

My wife,
who came from another country
and made a place for me in it.

There,
the feeling does not divide.

What hurts
and what opens
are the same place.

Desire looks out
over its own distance
and does not turn away.

All the names fall off.

There is only this,
one life,
felt completely,

as though every grief
and every moment of brightness
had been gathered
into a single tear.