The Refusal

I came to it
as one comes to water
in the dark.

It waited.

No voice in it,
no face,
only the ease it offered
to what I carried.

I lifted it.

The hand knew before I did.
A pause
entered the body
and would not leave.

There was something in me
that did not bend.
Not strength.
Not faith.

A hardness, perhaps,
or a truth
too plain to name.

I stood there
between the taking
and the not taking.

Nothing intervened.
No sign.

Only the weight
of being present
to what I was about to do.

I set it down.

The moment did not open.
No light followed.

Only a narrowing,
a colder air,
as if the world had withdrawn
one of its comforts.

Pain came nearer then.
It did not speak.

I did not ask it to.

We remained so,
without agreement,
without relief.

And I saw
there would be no end to this,
only the long keeping
of it.