Because I could not admit

we know God through suffering

I was sealed up in the wall.

They left a gap in which my body

could curl like a fetus,

and a little sky, which they filled in

brick by brick, and perhaps 

it troubled the masons

to be immuring a human being

because they whistled loudly,

a trowel shook, mortar spilt.

Yet it was a tight course.

I knew better than to press against it.

When the dark closed in

I lay listening to my pulse

louder, louder, and the distant voices

singing―I knew better

than to guess the words

or listen for my name.

​

Then I was the wall itself, 

everything the voices long for

and cannot have―the self, 

the stone inside the stone.