Unspeakable

One hour dwelling on mercy is just a start.
Maybe what we call fortune is a point
along an arc whose end we cannot see.
Men dug trenches before standing in them,
aiming at other men whose names they
did not know. Were trenches a forethought
of graves soon filled? Was Beethoven
an insurgent? Is there a direction toward
which Augustine’s words do not point us?
It’s easy—not comforting—to imagine
a moon torn to shreds along the thorns
of a climbing rose. Not every life’s wake
reaches beyond itself before settling into
stillness. Often, something unspeakable
rests at the center of what we say. Not
every escape from lightning leads to Luther.
Only one road we know as Damascus. Others
led to Dachau, then all the ones following.

---

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry: Fall Sanctuary (Nicholas Roerich Prize); Restoring the Narrative (Donald Justice Prize); and No Other Kind of World (X. J. Kennedy Prize), among others. The New Republic, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, Bennington Review, and Southern Poetry Review have published his poems. Two collections, Coming into an Inheritance and A Right Devotion, are forthcoming. He teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN.