The Balance

For all the days my mother’s mother spent
silent with her husband’s obstinate pride—an
inordinate man, in a small, recalcitrant country,
where that kind of life is daily,

I’d want to mention love,
that means you’re sleeping now
in the room
right next to this one;

Ronald Center’s hushed
Dona Nobis Pacem is
helping me remember

the simple aspiration of
Andrei Rublyov—

and the thought of all intensity
swings back: he would
have understood
the stubbornness that made
a film like that, an icon,
love, a bell.