It's been two thousand years now that, with a wounded leg,
the god's amazing loves have dragged along.

He has aged. Soon
he won't be noticed except from way up in a plane
in the markings of wheat
that yield the trace
of an ancient sanctuary.

He solicits a language of caresses,
open pasture, available bodies,

and the words refuse, and this elsewhere is already in his death
except for a slender purple flower under the sun.

He can still act the god all around,
evening's worn heart.

He guesses the flower will slip
fragile
from one century to the next with its prayer.