Terrible Rosary at Line Four

I accuse You with my hands full.

Not from a mountain,
not from a clean room of candles,
not with the silvered mouth of a saint,
but between the chute and the press,
where the belt keeps bringing the same small wound of metal
to the same place in my palm.

Absent One,
I say it under the guard of the motor:

You hide in repetition
because You fear the naked instant.

You hide in the bolt,
in the box,
in the clamp,
in the blue glove stiff with oil,
in the exact return of the lever
as if eternity were too ashamed
to arrive except disguised as hourly wage.

The line answers by not answering.

Click.
Feed.
Lift.
Press.

The fluorescent tubes hum their thin white fever.
My wrist learns the religion of no escape.
The clock above receiving
hangs like a nailed eye
and will not weep.

I say, Lord—if Lord You are—
come out of the pattern.

Come out.

Come like a rupture,
come like a hammer through the roof,
come like thunder with Your name exposed,
because I am tired
of this small obedience to objects,
this liturgy of parts,
this unchoired hymn of the conveyor
dragging the day through my ribs.

And then the machine does not change.

That is how You begin.

The machine does not change,
the belt does not blaze,
the supervisor does not turn his face into an angel,
the whistle does not split the air
with trumpets.

Only the fourth stroke enters deeper than the third.

Only the oil-smell sharpens
until it becomes almost blood.

Only the screw-head waiting in my glove
takes on the terrible patience of a bead.

Click.

My thumb closes.

Feed.

My breath is counted.

Lift.

My shoulder burns awake.

Press.

Something kneels in the piston.

I do not kneel.
I am kneeled.

Click: the first accusation.
Feed: the second accusation.
Lift: the third, poorer now.
Press: the fourth breaks open,
and there, in the repetition I despised,
Your hiddenness grinds its teeth into light.

O Christ of the unbeautiful interval,
O Word buried under torque and quota,
O crucified Center threaded through the axle,
You do not descend on the line.

You are the line’s descent.

You are not the escape from the counted thing.
You are the Count
who enters counting
until number itself grows hot.

Again.

Click,
and the small part touches my palm
like a coal that has not remembered flame.

Feed,
and my boredom, that grey animal,
is drawn forward by the throat.

Lift,
and the hours I wasted
lift with it, greasy, reluctant, still mine.

Press,
and my attention sparks
where I thought there was only habit.

Again.

Click—
not bead, not bolt,
but bead becoming bolt becoming wound becoming word.

Feed—
the absent God dragged through the present nerve.

Lift—
the self I wore to endure the shift
rising off me in strips of sweat.

Press—
my name crushed thinner,
my seeing hammered clear.

I had wanted You elsewhere.

That was my blindness.

I had wanted You in the exception,
in the red tear of heaven,
in the beautiful violence that excuses a man
from returning to his station.

But You hide where I cannot admire myself for finding You.

You hide where no pilgrim comes.
You hide where the tongue has no room
to polish its theology.
You hide in the eighth hour,
in the ache behind the earplug,
in the tendon’s mutiny,
in the lint-blackened cuff,
in the foreman’s cough,
in the bin marked DEFECTIVE
where my patience goes to rust.

And now the machines become a terrible rosary.

Not gentle.
Not fragrant.
Not the soft beads of a grandmother’s pocket.

Iron beads.
Piston beads.
Beads of impact and interval.
Beads that do not soothe
but seize.

Each one passes through my fingers
and takes a little sleep from me.

Each one names what I would not name.

Indifference.
Resentment.
Dulled mercy.
The pleasure of being absent
from my own life.

Click: I am here.

Feed: I am not mine.

Lift: attention is a wound.

Press: the wound is fire.

Do not stop.

No—do not stop yet.

Let the terrible rosary turn
until my boredom has no body left,
until the fog in me is milled down to edge,
until the blank day opens its furnace-mouth
and I see, not vision,
not spectacle,
but this:

the bolt in the palm,
the palm in the breath,
the breath in the chest,
the chest in the flame,
the flame in the hidden Lord
who has always preferred flesh
to thunder.

Now the line runs through me.

Now the motor hums beneath my thoughts
like a buried psalm
that refuses music until the singer is broken enough.

Now I do not accuse You of hiding.

I accuse You of being too near.

Nearer than praise.
Nearer than refusal.
Nearer than the part I fasten,
nearer than the hand that fastens,
nearer than the boredom I brought like a dead thing
and laid, without knowing,
on Your altar of steel.

Again.

Click—
my old absence.

Feed—
Your secret pressure.

Lift—
the world, unbearable because inhabited.

Press—

fire,
not above me,

fire in the wrist,
fire in the counted breath,
fire in the ordinary command:

stay.

Stay and burn clean.

Stay and see.

Stay until the repetition
is not repetition
but the narrow gate
opening and closing
on the same bright hinge.

Comments

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