In Memory of Joe Brainard
the remnant of a vast, oceanic
bruise (wound delivered early and long ago)
was in you purity and
sweetness self-gathered, CHOSEN
*
When I tried to find words for the moral sense that unifies
and sweetens the country voices in your collage The Friendly Way,
you said It's a code.
You were a code
I yearned to deciper. —
In the end, the plague that full swift runs by
took you, broke you; —
in the end, could nottake you, did not break you--
you had somehow erased within you not only
meanness, but anger, the desire to punish
the universe for everything
not achieved, not tasted, seen again, touched — ;
...the undecipherable
code unbroken even as the soul
learns once again the body it loves and hates is
made of earth, and will betray it.
