From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine I

When his dogs leapt on Actaeon, he

cried (did he cry out?)—He flung

his arm to command, they tore his hand

from the wrist stump, tore

guts from his belly through the tunic, ripped

the cry from his throat.

That’s how we know a god, when the facts

leap at the tenderest innards, and we know

the god is what we can’t change. You

stood over me as I woke, I opened my eyes, I saw

that I’d seen and that it was too

late: the seeing

of you in the doorway with weak electric light

fanning behind you in the hall, and my room and narrow pallet steeped in shadow

were what I couldn’t change, and distantly

I wanted you, and, as distantly,

I heard the dogs, baying.