The quality of doubt, the conditions of belief,
the voice of one who hears the voice of God.

Not silence—soundless pageantry. As many gods
as persons claiming to represent those gods.

If voices and bodies are interchangeable,
we must be inside a myth. A second definition

of the noun priest: a mallet used to kill fish.
Visions pass, or are misremembered.

Armor becomes ornament, wood becomes wire.
You prefer a slice to the loaf, your lover

to the crowd, in the valley of speech. In the vision
of that valley. The fable in which that vision occurs.

The anvil resting on the altar. The spell passing
through parrot-colored glass, touching the spine

of the book in which I read of God’s javelin,
an annunciation, wide as a feather, narrow as a nest.