Those were fully worked words
which you held in your hand; in your hand you weighed
them for their density. All pebbles are round.

When you lugged them
they broke the skull which caught them
neatly in two.

Out poured the soft grey stuff
from its fragile web
which had contained that century’s best boast
up to that moment.

No, you said to the giant, I had not intended
to kill you, merely to make things
perfectly clear. What a lad you were!

Now I keep remembering how you worked
that spillage, and you a poet, at that.
I should have noticed how your eyes bulged
in their sockets.

When I get up in the morning, in my century,
I am translucent like alabaster
with what you would call notforgetting,
Ruonarotti.

I am porous where the light strikes me –
a milky interrogation.
I begin to see through myself. I know
that word, that piëta.
Very close to my own – are you
my sculptor or my stone?