This is what they are offered. Their bodies, their eyes which fail
them. It is springtime. There is rain and the paths are rutted.

The gray mud along the road is a gravelly mortar.
There is an apple tree among the trees of the wood, light

in the rain-white smoke of blossoms. This is not suffering.
This is the story of what suffices, how the body

can be divided infinitely, how it can be held
like bread in the hands of a stranger, bread which is broken,

the dust of flour falling through the column of sunlight,
dust so finely lit it becomes nothing before their eyes.