The world tonight breathes so slowly
that you might suspect it had stopped,
turned its body, like ours, toward the coolness
Above the darkened windows outside,
lines of white laundry reach across the alley,
the ancient brick glowing amber on either side.
You can read their secret lives like leaves
in a bowl: the smoke-yellowed undershirts
of workingmen, the lace-trimmed slips
and sundresses, gauzy shawls and scarves
the ladies will wear to come before God
on Sunday morning, smiling, singing the songs
their grandmothers taught them long ago.
How lovely these ordinary clothes given rest,
given pause and dreams of their own
while awaiting the heft of the body's return,
while the body itself waits for a stirring
greater than itself. There is no hurry.
The songs continue singing without us.
The cobblestone below will echo our steps
in the morning, as if the day were new,
as if we had not been here all along.
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