His Nerve and Air

Listen to his ardent explanations --

his attempts at a defense and expiation

of the sins of which he’s been accused,

to which he has confessed with few excuses,

although not without some reasonable

reservations: listen to the trouble

he assiduously takes to make

his spiritual sphere appear as rational as --

what? It’s in his passionately uttered

but and therefore, as it were and might

have been and would be if that you’ve

begun to grasp he’s giving you a gift:

to see reflected in his breathed bewilderments

the living you -- to get more understanding

of the mystery. It’s his nerve and air

that matter, not the data of his history.

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