Carl Phillips, Regalia Figure

We were mistaken, I think.

I think the soul wants
no mate
except body, what it has

already, I think
the body is not
a cage,

no,

but the neccessary foil
against which the soul
proves it was always

true, what they said: to stand
unsuffering
in the presence of another's
agony is its own
perhaps difficult but
irrefutable pleasure.

That I might not have
thought so, without
you, I understand now.

Likewise, about the body
wanting most
only another body, the flesh
from within
lit as if with an instinct for,

endlessly, more
of itself, for a joint suffering which,

if it too is a kind of pleasure,

if also the only one the body is
likely in this lifetime to

come into, how refuse?

Possibly-- probably-- there
was not ever a choice
anyway.

The revised version of
effortless.

The twice-plowed-
back-into-itself
field, the light
upon it,

the animal lives
inside the field, inside the light--

I am learning to pity
less what
lacks will entirely.

There are things worse than being
like that. -- And yet,
to let go of it, ambition,
seems as impossible, as
impossible--

How extend forgiveness
insincerely? Meeting you,

I knew you utterly.
I saw, utterly,

this life.
I'd put it on.
I'd wear it like

--a crown, for
how it flashes.