The Soul Poem by Elizabeth Robinson

The soul in its doorway
and then the doorway dies.
This is misbehavior.
Each soul is a kind of manna
on itself. A doorway that recedes
in size until perspective tells kind
falsehoods: that the doorway is fitted
to the soul. Slick manna of meaning is soul's
parasitical soul. This is not good.
Goodness does not have structure.

The soul loves a termite's logic of
structure: it eats it. Soul reproduces itself
a hundred, no, a thousand times and eats
itself. Infinitesimal teeth make pearly dust.

The soul compels love and extermination. By taking away
the larger structure, each of us souls acquires many,
many smaller structures. A home inside pearly
dust. The tooth's logic is the doorway.

Manna spoils if not eaten immediately. Around us,
we see it descend. It tells us we are one: be united
I see it descend. I see the doorway cut into the belly
of the manna. Soul, disclose this soul. Madly repeat
yourself. Like a fine mist in the air, one
doorway thrown open after another. Until the portal
states its purpose: disgorge purpose. We are one
pulse, particulate and tinting the atmosphere.
We see the spoils descend. Immediately:
surround us. All souls. I aspirate. I surround
us.

Faith will brandish the blade that
will cut toward the inner workings. Hence
the inner workings escape, and slip around
to the door, and there they shrink and
make the soul's perfect structural opacity.
Only repetition does violence, but that
is no shirking of the good. The necessary
good. The good constraining of the doorway:
we do as I, immediately, sink down into it. I do believe
the soul's logic is good.