The Grammar of Affection

Without syntax there is no immortality,

who hassays my friend,

who has counted beads along a string

and understood that time is

and understood water in a brook

and understood or words in passage,

and understood caravans amid the whitest dunes,

and understood a team of horses in the mountain trace.

There is always movement, muttering,

There isin flight to wisdom,

which cannot be fixed. The kingdom

There iscomes but gradually,

breaking word by wing or day by dream.

We proceed on insufficient knowledge,

trusting in what comes, in what comes down

There isin winding corridors,

There isin clamorous big rooms,

There isabove a gorge on windy cliffs.

In places where discovered sounds make sense,

where subjects run through verbs

to matter in the end, a natural completion

in the holy object of affections

as our sentence circles round again.

This grammar holds us, makes us shine.