Centurion

Centurion

Like you, I too have tried to nail it down

and hoist it up, have hoped to see it framed

against a Galilean sky like Prufrock’s patient

etherized upon a tabletop. I’ve known 

your burning need to know the shifting thing

that dances round the corners of your mind

in spinning parables, that twists about like women

at a wedding feast with endless wine,

impossible to look away, impossible to still

or reason out. You’re not the first to scribble

something final on a plaque and hang it well 

in sight, hoping to conclude this quest to label

that which strangely pulls your spirit up but calls

your body down, down to eat with prostitutes and all

the lepers with their pussing wounds about the walls

at night, the tramps who circle round the desert wells

like feral dogs to feast upon a wounded man. 

And no, you would not be insane to listen

closely to the wordless plucking of your soul, the strings

along that tightened harpsichord now harmonizing 

with the raspy cry that rends the veiling dark

and then the curtain, exposing what’s behind

the lyrics to this earthy melody—music tends

to sound the tenderest when notes are long

in coming. A few days more, my friend, and then

the search will be complete, your hunger satisfied  

with something terminal. Until that time, find certainty

in this: truth, though knowable, will simply not be pinned.