Vestigial

                                  "Absence my presence is . . . "
                                                                                             Greville

No way to know the thing but through the thing the thing
has left.  No way to reconstruct an absence fully.  How the footprint
in itself is not a thing , itself is absence, of a nature not the thing
passed on, or by, or through.  Beyond
                                                                              the myth, a footprint
left in the mind by the passing of the god — how even that
confounds you, who believe the words themselves themselves are
vestiges, traces of a mass more intricate, compact and manyshadowed that must once
have passed: the passing of the god.  Its motion?  Death?
No way to know the thing but through the thing the thing
has left.   A remnant?  Left the room? Some chamber of the heart?
What would it be to be the heart the god has left?