BARLEY
Tournedos of barley
crammed into thick honey
laced with thyme, stubborn
in the roof of your mouth
and how it grows on you,
after penitent flows of salad
of cucumber and olive oil.
And how its crumble like sand
reminds you of the
arid blanched cliffs
of the Cyclades of your parents—
A few slippery kernels
drop back to the paper plate.
And it's always the barley,
nimble as beads
from a snapped necklace,
whose misgivings you scoop
in your hand under the sermon
for the dead at mass,
a palmful of religion
you raise your wanting mouth,
the barley graced
with powdered sugar
to soften the blow
she was dead
while we ate in the pew
together, children again,
crying and swallowing
at the same time,
while the altar boys
presided over a parade
of more tins of barley
from chapel turned kitchen
stirring this mixture—
the sugar binding the barley
brown to white, dirt
to dreams, consuming it down
with red wine slipping
from the gold spoon
along the cheek, worse
than tears, whose trails
you still follow.
ABOUT THE POET
