And Crying (poem)

And Crying

They wanted to tell the saddest of stories

That needed its ending quickened and dashed

Dear hope

It needed a lapse

A single star

A nightfall to recuse itself from mustness

Just light to mark the weathering of an instant

Mercury slow its downslide soon to plummet

A face with a shine to the brow and a gleam of watering

Questions…beams a little…most gentle and sorrowing

Contemplation of a child

Losing more, losing most, losing less

Less, says the grandmother

What does a child know?

All day there has been hunger and a toy

To distract, a figure cut from cloth

And none of the men and women on this road

Could rid the sight of the world from their patch

This ice, solid and black, this mud encrystalized

This interlocking, Byzantine, yet tickingly mathematical

Filigree, these tiny dirt-palaces

Their patch, and that ahead

Where each foot grinds phenomenon

And all imaginary lives within

Compress

If you were given the choice

To be found by explorers in your last attitude

A tablet with your name pressed against your heart

If you could speak

You grant allowance, them to break

The two hands, the thumb, the arm from the elbow

Or would your cipher eyes say nothing

And Crying

The Earth Unseeded

(2019, Stephanie Foster)