To a Fly Inside in January

See how far you have come,
autumn done, frosts flung,
or sprung from indoor larva
and still young, the glimmer
of heat your fake summer,
but still the window light
and its clear cold
hold
you as if you know
what’s outside is right
even if the freeze
deceases you.
I too brood
for what’s not good
for me but right,
the cold light,
to be no longer between
the pane and the pain.

You Can Make Me Clean
                     Mark 1:40-45

said I the leper to the teacher
who put out his hand to
touch my scaling as no man
had touched me since I was
a boy as smooth as dirt.

Like a miracle my stigmata
unstained. Tzaraath vanished.
Not now did my integument erupt
like a nation’s abrasion. For him
unexiled, I would not slough.

I fell to be a thank you, but
no, go tell just the priest,
not the swarm who ahhed
at my sinless skin, ached
for my plastic flesh.

Yes, I said. Still, I could
not shut my whole
reimagined mouth. It unsealed
a hymn of love so high
it sicced the sick on him,

to my wide woe. Who could trust
a man uncrusted as I was,
his guilt gone to grace,
touched in the head,
his purity curious?

No leper would have me,
cleansed because I asked,
presumptuous, untouchable,
earth’s exception. My flesh grew
deficient in flesh and blood.

And so I wandered like
Lazarus, alive, too well.
The teacher I loved went his way
and I lived in my desert
unscathed for forty years.

David Groff is the author of Clay, chosen by Michael Waters for the Louise Bogan Award, and Theory of Devolution, selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry  Series. An independent book editor and publishing consultant, he teaches in the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at The City College of New York.