Heather McHugh

"Breather" from "Muddy Matterhorn" (2020)

"One wants to say to the dead
Come back this minute, you
Would love this new

Millennium, these next
Few lifetimes, even just an hour of ours!
But ah, there's never only one, one

Fails to say, except by dint
Of error; even the goose
Can gather more

Than two alone can celebrate, in
Honking alphabets.
And one may love

Specifically that errant one, fourth from
The end - o senses! - wherebefore all things
Are possible, wheresoafter

Only signs. What's come between us,
Mirror with your ever-loving
Doppelgang? What infant's crawled today

Behind the glass's ploy, to play
The flats and sharps we're always only
Only telling of? I watch, intransitive.

That is the skeptic's motto. (Even clarity's
Delusory, unlike the sense of love, from which
Come charity and faith-and maybe even

Hope-though hope is hard, and faith
is bodiless. We've ironized too long,
Shed rusty glances over every landing, every

Leaving season. Living still, we have
Our moments - one in a shine ignited,
One in a shout extinguished! Marriages of words

Remarking something measureless, as figures
Of affinity go listing down the rift.) Dear God, get
Down with us! Come back to be

In danger once again, and bear
The living gift - the giving in and giving out
That cannot be distinguished."