How faceless their pathos, the ovals
of these heads, huge, smooth, hermetic
as eggs, and solemn, especially the man’s

Who’s to say where the man ends,
the world begins; what it is
that wakes him in a visible sweat,

As if we arrived through the blind extremes
of sleep, we opened our mouths, eyes closed,
and the priest laid on our tongues his coins

You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;

Take the moment we’re living in, the traces
of words just inches from your lips.

Our own hands are never pure enough.