Kyrie
︎︎︎ Matthew Gasda
︎ July 1, 2026
This purity must be practiced not merely
at a particular age in life,
but throughout one's existence.
Increase and multiply. This is always a concession
that we are restaging the act of creation
through incarnation or something like it.
The Aquarian delight you took
when high winter came
and the narcissi froze in their pots in perfect stillness.
I have, as you've noticed, been struggling
with the intractable presence of living alone
with my persecution and the Kyrie Eleison
of the man I once was, smiling casually in the dusk
at the cafe with ink and paper
and no notion of the news,
and only a lively intelligence to stand
as a mark of redemption.
Since then, I have avoided poetry
the same way you avoid letters to your parents,
or the way anyone puts off the most expensive calculations
that drain the mind of its reason.
The music gives voice to the spirit of the inner words,
the ones which require forceful upbeats to take us
into the second movement.
The Lord's word endures forever,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
The listeners are always in tears.
But enough about myself.
You lived in the uncanny dwelling place,
waiting for the return of the inner self
that I can only describe in the ideal language of wishing
that my character admits: in its own essentially
and unpredictably recurrent rhythmic
moral exhaustion.
Engulfment, yes, depart, parting, departure,
apart, aperture, opening
to being born
at the level of endless performance
or participation with the mechanism of the curtain.
at a particular age in life,
but throughout one's existence.
Increase and multiply. This is always a concession
that we are restaging the act of creation
through incarnation or something like it.
The Aquarian delight you took
when high winter came
and the narcissi froze in their pots in perfect stillness.
I have, as you've noticed, been struggling
with the intractable presence of living alone
with my persecution and the Kyrie Eleison
of the man I once was, smiling casually in the dusk
at the cafe with ink and paper
and no notion of the news,
and only a lively intelligence to stand
as a mark of redemption.
Since then, I have avoided poetry
the same way you avoid letters to your parents,
or the way anyone puts off the most expensive calculations
that drain the mind of its reason.
The music gives voice to the spirit of the inner words,
the ones which require forceful upbeats to take us
into the second movement.
The Lord's word endures forever,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
The listeners are always in tears.
But enough about myself.
You lived in the uncanny dwelling place,
waiting for the return of the inner self
that I can only describe in the ideal language of wishing
that my character admits: in its own essentially
and unpredictably recurrent rhythmic
moral exhaustion.
Engulfment, yes, depart, parting, departure,
apart, aperture, opening
to being born
at the level of endless performance
or participation with the mechanism of the curtain.