I cannot remember the name of that priest who died in agony
with his arms around the tree of ignorance. Under his body
lay the black scattered shards of his sacred vow of denial
to the monument of shadows, and the skin of a fruit uneaten.
Nearly all our words, all our truths, are pretense — or at best strangers
met on a road a thousand years ago, held with the eye in a wordless moment
and then lost to the dusk-lit air of remembrance.
Lord make me chaste, said the Saint, but not yet.
The banana’s skin does not ask why it has been thrown aside
and left undigested beside the path lit by lovers and darkened by gods.
Not every life can be a chalice; not every name can be spoken. All, however,
though they clutch with their last grasp at the tree of ignorance, can teach.