A hull, a husk, what a waste…what’s left’s only the exposing of foundation to the scandal of undestroying light: the Israelien basement lying open, exhumed innardly for autopsy, domestic viscera, how there’s nothing left to heal or save, to balm or else, to change — partially unfinished forever, an embarrassment of riches, and a rich embarrassment, too: the char of boxes, latter survivors of those once kept in perpetual flux, stepward retained and remained by the sacred calendar always, immovable trunks stilled at the stairhead, the leftovers of the melted refrigerator, storaged waste the wilted LPs, textbooks and cookbooks and the books underlined only in ash, a disagreeing highlight, flaming white rounds of balls for pingpong use on a roll around the tabled remains without a net. The yard, which is the furthest preserve, or once was, of His house, the only parcel left somewhat unscathed, otherly harmed, give or take, we’re talking. And how He’d never noticed that, never will either — that not only had they uprooted and moved His house for Him, and its frontlawn, too, the whole lot of plot with anything goes strewn and the fence too low to keep in appearances with a gate without a lock…but how they’d gone and taken the backyard, too, there facing the windows He’d never looked out of, will never look down from — they’re shattered, sills a crack of cinder — and so the backyard surviving and with it, its twin appletrees, grown so near the ice they’d been forgotten about, withered, and witheringly forlorn, taken as icicles when regarded, if, by whom — as shadows, mere excreta of winter, wisps of remaining smoke, two mirrors placed to face one another, reflectively infinite with frost: Rubina had climbed them once hard between her legs, Simone and Judith had one summer every day of it come here to pick and cool; though all of their apples had long soured, then fallen far moons ago, only to be pilfered by Brooklyn boychicks out for a sin motzei Shabbos — now nearly a year dead, these two trees seasonscorched, still standing.
