Bruce Bond

BLACK

The more musical the hand, the swells
of time and voice that nonetheless assume
a pulse, the more memorable the fall
that is one part earth, another moon,
one part flesh and the sea it comes from.
Everything we know is pulled in two.
You at your keyboard, the sun in flames,
every chord your reticence sinks into.
But do not be afraid. You are listening.
Even as the sun goes blind, as song tears
apart the surface of what it remembers,
what it wants; you are a beautiful thing,
a nothing, too moved to curse the ocean
now, to raise the heavens where they drown.

Bruce Bond is the author of fourteen books including five forthcoming: Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press), For the Lost Cathedral (LSU Press), Black Anthem (Tampa Review Prize, University of Tampa Press), Sacrum (Four Way Books), and The Other Sky (Etruscan Press). Presently he is Regents Professor at University of North Texas.