.jpg)
Witch of the unbroken note—
warm brass against the teeth,
a sweetness with enough weight in it
to lean on—
let me come closer.
Your neck takes the lamplight slowly;
the light goes no farther.
I have one match left. You were singing
when the first road sank here,
when its builders, boot by boot,
went into the peat.
Still that bare shoulder. Still
no breathmark in your music.
Three centuries have sent their pumps here.
The impellers rot beside their makers.
You have not aged
by the crease one night puts
beside a sleeper’s mouth.
Only your pitch descends.
I follow it.
I lower my lamp. The water lifts
your mouth to mine.
I brought the plate myself.
Two names. Two dates.
An inch of unengraved bronze
between.
I wanted something wide enough to weather
the public hunger for an ending.
No. That is a lie.
I wanted their deaths to look less final.
I ordered the lettering to lean
toward its fellow;
I approved the proof.
Under your tongue the finished metal warms.
Each little hook of script
reaches farther than the hand that drew it.
They were tender sometimes.
One shelled peas into the other’s apron;
one, shaking, let the other shave
the hollow underneath the jaw.
I saw that.
I did not see the days alone,
the drawer shut with a hip,
the letter carried twice to the stove
and carried back.
Or was there a letter?
Look at me—manufacturing even
their concealment.
Give me their mouths before I furnish them
with answers.
You open yours.
The note comes up through root and coffin tack,
through the clay packed tight against a tooth.
So close: the small rough catch
I knew from one of their throats,
then the other’s whistle through a chipped incisor.
I step past the iron fence.
I step where the fence has rusted into water.
Your singing draws the warmth out of my lamp
and puts it underneath my ribs.
You—your unbroken note
solders shut
the rests.
That was the sweetness: nowhere for the ear
to fall through.
Nowhere for either buried mouth to stop
while the other went on speaking.
The blank inch blisters.
Letters skid across it, shank against shank;
the loops lock.
I cannot tell whose consonant
has caught in whose.
Beautiful throat,
this is your workmanship.
I lift the plate to hear beneath it.
From both bolt holes
the same rich answer blows.
Whose?
A reed strikes metal.
I hold it harder to my ear.
You sing it hotter.
Then leave one nick! One fault in the casting!
Give back the little irregularity
by which a key refuses
the wrong door.
I loved them.
There—my credential, damp with sweat,
held up to your enormous listening.
I loved them; therefore I could surely
reach down, straighten this,
undo—
my fingers stick.
The plate takes prints from me.
You have been waiting for the living pressure
that will make its letters legible again.
And still your sound is good to put my cheek against.
Let that stand.
The marsh’s cold machinery
has slackened at my knees;
under your hand the old ache in my shoulder
comes loose from the bone.
For this relief I would have come.
For less.
But now the note draws air through me
without my leave. My lungs are bellows;
when I clamp my lips,
my ribs keep feeding you.
There will be no last breath
I can call mine.
Lady, your unbroken note
is taking the toolmarks from the bronze,
taking the toothmarks from my tongue.
How tenderly you smooth the place
where I would stop you.
One letter still stands clear.
I cup my hand around it.
Your mouth is warm against my wrist;
beneath my palm
its upright softens,
bends toward the others.