At the Rothko at the Tate, Untitled c. 1950-2, 1996, 2022

Silences sit restless in shades, 
silences between sighs,
all sighs precursive, shaping mine, 
tracing sighs and silences
to the sigh after the last brush stroke—

as the origins of a phantom crystal;
misty crystal faces,
old grammar with ghost origins,
molten before life:
this flesh the outer reach of reckoning

the revelations of geology,
like a photo of a Rothko:
you can not comprehend what’s unwitnessed,
and mystery needs no reason
as it reaches the edges of synecdoche---

as the silent presence of you-before-me
shapes light into breath,
into the devotion of speech-as-host,
my phantom fascinated,
faceted by you-at-the-canvas:

not the words but the work,
this moment in space 
where and when I comprehend the desire of death
across transparent distances:
terminus. A silence. A point to all this beauty.