The truth never arrives in flaming red streams
like the ends of God’s hair.
It is the poor gritty dust that comes
from a little box of ammunition,
crusting in the season of rain.
The truth is sediment, rust,
not the shifting logs of dialectics.
It is the end of reason, of all endurance
when one no longer struggles against limitations.
It’s funny the way scholars know how everything moves:
how first one thing happens, then another,
how water breaks up into all its parts.
Across the sea we hail one another, the inept
who cannot sail. Perhaps if the stars were clearer,
if there weren’t any blackbirds,
if the stars were anchors, pegs.
But then the wind would not blow so far.