John Fuller
Snap, crackle, pop
Noise from a joint has three sources,
Three conditions, three troubles:
Arthritis, tendon flick
And gas bubbles.
Knee-bends were once a healthy sign
Of the physical life we seek.
We kept a strict account
Of every creak.
As language hides in gorgeous robes
Our superstition, like a druid,
The knee is a bag of cartilage
Filled with fluid.
This little model of your body
Is all that you’d expect,
Snapping to attention when
You genuflect.
The reason is the reduced pressure:
Gas in the blood expands
When the ligaments stretch
Like elastic bands.
Every reason, then, to stay upright
Like the citizen you carelessly claim
To be of the Eternal City
In intention and name.
For myself, I’d rather be pure spirit,
With a love that is boundless
Beyond the grating of surfaces,
Painless and soundless.
Torture is the extremest proof of feeling
In bodies that have known their time.
Love has been vigilance, and regret.
Now it is kneeling.
Obeisance is not obedience.
To bow is not to obey.
We would still like to will our conditions,
To buy but not to pay.
There will be ways enough of folding up
Our bodily ration less ridiculous
Than this, no doubt, when God
Takes down our particulars.
Page(s) 23-24
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