It apprises us still, moment by moment, language like a hand on a sword,

the sword dropped briefly so that a fish could be placed on the eyes

of blind, miserable, tolerant Tobias.

Tobias accepted the consequences as artfully achieved,

the pity-poem denuded, excerpted from the "text."

But in that fixed aurality the "text" had survived its own melodic utterance,

became useful as a miraculous tale:

They laid a fish upon the saint's eyes (this is where the it, the "text,"

is altered/alters itself to become a they/a we).

The eyes closed, opened again, and then saw!

The rime of the sea salt stringent as a prayer, caustic as the future's

invisible decree: Your eyes are healed, Tobias (he wasn't St. Tobias,

but would become saint). Where you see a rose, a rose petal will fall.