Hymn by Carl Phillips

Hymn

Less the shadow

than you a stag, sudden, through it.   

Less the stag breaking cover than

the antlers, with which   

crowned.

Less the antlers as trees leafless,

to either side of the stag’s head, than—

between them—the vision that must   

mean, surely, rescue.

Less the rescue.

More, always, the ache   

toward it.

When I think of death, the gleam of

the world darkening, dark, gathering me   

now in, it is lately

as one more of many other nights   

figured with the inevitably   

black car, again the stranger’s

strange room entered not for prayer   

but for striking

prayer’s attitude, the body

kneeling, bending, until it finds   

the muscled patterns that   

predictably, given strain and

release, flesh assumes.   

When I think of desire,

it is in the same way that I do

God: as parable, any steep

and blue water, things that are always   

there, they only wait

to be sounded.

And I a stone that, a little bit, perhaps   

should ask pardon.

My fears—when I have fears—

are of how long I shall be, falling,   

and in my at last resting how

indistinguishable, inasmuch as they   

are countless, sire,

all the unglittering other dropped stones.