BREAD AND WINE

Si le mot n’existe pas, inventez-le; mais assurez-
vous d’abord que cela n’existe pas.
–Charles Baudelaire

Not every dawn is heartbreaking
every moon atrocious
                                          every sunset bitter
What else can we tell you

Our dream of tomorrow is like a widow
at evening prayer
counting time on her rosary

Hematite beads joining blood to blood

Conduit of curious choices and chances
Somnolent stones
of unsuspecting communion and revolt

Time to batten down the hatches
Call in the constellations of hope
Put thesis and antithesis on the back-burner

What difference believing
and not believing
We who’ve doubted so much in the name
                of theory

Not every sunset is the end of the world
We’ll go on just as we are 

Fallible not faultless
                                         Forlorn
Not entirely fatuous

All thought of the dialectic hardly a twinkle
                in your father’s eye

Mark A. Murphy is the editor of online journal, POETiCA REViEW. His poetry has appeared in over 250 magazines in print and online. He is the author of 6 full-length collections including The Ontological Constant due out 2020 in a bilingual German/English edition from Moloko Print (Germany).