The spirit would leave
but the body is strong
and won’t let go.
--Robert Lowell
I may have paraphrased. I heard Lowell
end a poem that way at a reading,
but can’t find the lost words—though I know well
I heard them—anywhere. It’s like bleeding
from the slashed wrist without a tourniquet.
Perhaps I missed them when I scanned through his
Collected Poems. Felt scholars would vet
the lines; they’d turn up on Google. Yet this
research has left me void. For years I’ve wished
to tell him how he oversimplified
existence, like Matthew saying we’d fish
for men. Better to cite each dignified
cell, its mitochondria igniting
energy—our bodyspirit lightning,
one with Endless All, the Great Inviting.
Roger Armbrust
October 26, 2008
