Past this Mark

Some days, we will follow you
To our limits, small Virgils,
You might say Virgil’s Virgils,

The poet’s supposed words,
Supposed property, guides,
Actually, to underworlds.

The heavens we know about
But, as words, we can’t visit.
And unlike the poet guide

Of Dante Alighieri’s
Famous imagination
(You see? Virgil's just a word)

Words can’t reach the Inferno,
Either—we accompany
Your creature thoughts to the core

Of your most intense feeling,
Which is always suffering
Or unribboned ecstasy,

And then we abandon you,
Or seem to. Theology
Only approximated

Reality for language
When it offered us Limbo,
Not just the Catholic form—

Any inbetween being
Neither alive nor nothing,
Neither agentive nor still,

The being of the signing,
The being of the meaning,
Shadow bodies, bottled soul.

We don’t mean to let you down.
Many ways, we fly beyond
You, far past you, outlast you.

But when you are pure creature,
Knotted in your pain and grief
And spasms of ecstasy,

Then, no, we can’t follow you.
You’re somewhere we’ve never been.
No word is ever wordless.