This Ecstasy

By Chard DeNiord Chard DeNiord

It’s not paradise I’m looking for

but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.

Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness

among the animals before I started

listening to the news. Call it the hint

I had about the knowledge that would explode.

In the meantime, which is real time

plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt

and speaking French, which is more

than I can take, which I marvel at

like a boy from the most distant seat

in the Kronos Dome, where I am one

of so many now I see the point

of falling off. There’s not enough seats

for us all to attend the eschaton.

This ecstasy that plants beauty

on my tongue, so that if it were

a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness

of a hummingbird and grace of a heron,

is so much mercy in light of the darkness

that comes. Who would say consolation?

Who would say dross? Not that anyone

would blame them. All night I hear

so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted

to look back, to save myself in hindsight,

where all I see is the absence of me.

Where all I hear is your voice,

which couldn’t be more strange.

How to go on walking hand in hand

without our bodies on the path

we made for our feet, talking, talking?

Chard deNiord, “This Ecstacy” from The Double Truth. Copyright © 2011 by Chard deNiord. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

Biography

Chard deNiord earned a BA in religious studies from Lynchburg College, a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A cofounder of the New England College MFA program in poetry, he is the author of the poetry collections Asleep in the Fire (1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), and The Double Truth (2011). His book Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs (2011) . . .

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