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Or the book that’s read over and over again,

Or the word that is spoken,

Or painting with hog bristle brush,

Or playing my mother’s piano,

Or writings of Lao-Tzu, Omar Khayyam,

Or the close of the door to the terrace, just so,

Or the close of the shutters at dusk—

Or the infinite digits of pi,

Or equations for gravity,

Perfect ellipse—

Or the bride who unbuttons her rumpled white dress,

Or the family that breaks

When the father returns to his country,

Or boys who collect the tin cans on the street,

Or the bank tellers sorting the coins and the bills,

Or the soldiers who crawl through the sludge

With cocked guns,

Or the writers of letters that wait in locked drawers,

Or the lawyers and pilots and teachers and dragglers—

There’s no completion in patterns,

For patterns are constantly restitched in new patterns.

There’s no completion in history, which kneels

Bare and mute at the feet of the future.

There’s no completion in mind

With its unending halls,

Or electronic minds that have no beliefs.

There’s no completion in seasons, repeating repeating,

Or Earth as its spin traces loops through the stars,

Or the Sun as it slowly consumes itself, fire on fire,

Or Space as it twists and expands in the dark—

Or the pitiless ticking of clocks,

Or the withering of snapdragons after their seeds,

Or my crippled dear Abbas bent over his cane,

Or the hand as it cleanses the wound,

Or the kiss that brings life to life,

And then later to nothingness.

There’s no completion in nothingness.