Her canopy conceals from me the clouds over Port Lligat.
One by one the desert’s drawers are opened
and rifled through, releasing her remains in zeroes
or in vowels that look like them.
Suspended in air, sapped of life but saturated
with something more profound, like amber
or the barrier of sound being broken, she grasps the rood.
These are merely self-contained miracles.
That sound was heard by those far outside the city,
but for us—gathered around the wide sarcophagus
of her hair, the perfect mound of her flesh—
there was no din. Only a noiseless flash.
Then nothing. Then the terrible flowering
of her vanishing.