Archepiscopal Regret

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin together

The growth of galaxies is where the grave

Begins. Your death beamed there when light flashed out

From Jesus’ mouth and like a tidal wave

It drowned perfection.  Christ’s command made shout

Of death — our deaths — and deaths of long doomed stars

When untold eons pass.  A sky too wide

To call a sky expanded clanging scars

From stellar cannibals when orbs collide

And chomp each other, fifty thousand score

Times fifty thousand score, deaths times’ high hate

Of something like eternity.  The roar,

Inside its silent vacuum* is fate.

  Archbishops’ tombs, though swallowed up in fire

    Supernal, loathe our hearts and their desire.

*The poet pronounces this as three syllables.

©  Phillip Whidden