Grief Loop

Grief Loop
(after The Endless)

The man is trapped
in a very small cycle:

his face wrenches,
a slow wave of grief

starts its course,
and then he leaps

backward again, 
feels the same wave

begin to crest, over
and over, atop

a sea of mourning
growing vaster

with every repetition.
The man is in hell,

and as we watch
for each disjunction

in the image, we can
only wonder, as he does,

what first moment
of pain spawned this

prison, if some inhuman
architect knit time shut

or if this, for this man,
is how it’s always been.