Agape

I can feel the human heart beating with fear, in the supermarket;
how we are suspended in the gossamer of each other's lives,
so nervously.  In the steps of these people I know the shuffle
of my own bedraggled shoes, how we are besieged by threats
of guilt-cancer, of guilt-cleansing and the promise
that every one of us will be nailed to these fucking walls,
well before the opening of all outer space.  And to think
of the many instants, when tenderness breaks out
in a glance or a clasp, of flesh on real flesh,
from our harried natures, pummeled by time,
is a violent caress, then a cooling lava,
and the growl of a lost leopard.
Until the very nucleus of one's being,
sabotaged again and again by love,
grows firm in love, defiantly;
until all the fragments of one's being
are suffused with love, and their circuits are bathed
with the holiness of its knowing sorrow.