Poem for Sunday

From Jonathan Wells, courtesy of the New Yorker.

The Man With Many Pens


With one he wrote a number so beautiful

it lasted forever in the legends of numbers. With another



he described the martyrs’ feet as they marched

past the weeping stones and cypresses, watched



by their fathers. He used one as a silver wand to lift

a trout from its spawning bed to more fruitful waters



and set it back down, its mouth facing upstream.

He wrote Time has no other river but this one in us,



no other use but this turn in us from mountain lakes

of late desires to confusions passed through



with every gate open. Let’s not say he didn’t take us

with him in the long current of his letters, his calligraphy



and craft, moving from port to port, his hand stopping

near his heart, the hand that smudged and graced the page,



asking, asking, his fingers a beggar’s lucent black,

for the word that gave each of us away.