"Observance"

I feel from afar your trouble
and wonder: Why do you not call?

Surely some long call with me
could lift your gaze from
too present woes, help clarify
between disparate desperate paths
laid at your feet, which is the least
inclined or exposed, and which

of the fruits stretched out
to your hand, the most forbidding
or ravishing? Such is the custom

of our people, you and me,

instituted in our wisdom
and honored greatly lately
by a long breach, after which
shall we not lapse again to observance,
of ritual raptures and throes,
one of us call and catch up
together, practice and preach?

See how it goes?

I do not say that it must be you,
but the fact it is not is troubling.
A doubt and a cloud drift over my mind.
Perhaps you can no longer give me a ring.
Perhaps all your troubles were undisturbed
all this time. We only thought it was worth

something,

and the bitter gall of that cup
would be too much to raise again
to health, and drink, and lift up
one voice to sing,

as if one were enough.