Moving Through the Crowd

Moving Through the Crowd

Moving through the crowd at the memorial is its own education —
The specific navigation
Of who knew him which way, the various
Claims of relationship, the various
Descriptions of the man that emerge from the various
Mouths in the various
Positions of the room, the multiple men he was.

He was the colleague for the people from the office —
The specific specific of the caucus
Of the professional relationship, the man
Who showed up to meetings, who ran
The projects with a specific quality of attention,
Who was in the collective mention
Of the office narrative as a certain kind.

Moving through the crowd at the memorial
Is the multiple-man education, the serial
Encounter with the different relationships
That built the person, the different ships
In which he sailed across different waters
With different people, the specific daughters
And sons of his influence in the room.

And none of them are wrong — the office portrait
And the neighborhood portrait and the portrait
Of the old friend who knew him at twenty-two
Are all true, all real, all through
The specific prism of the relationship —
And none of them is the complete ship,
The full man, the total account.

The closest thing to the full account is standing in the room
With all the versions, in the specific bloom
Of the collective grief, where the multiple men
He was are all being honored, and then
The specific man that emerges from the multiplicity —
The specific and the public
Portrait that the memorial briefly assembles.

I walked the room and heard twelve different men described —
And recognized them all, the prescribed
Names all recognizably him — the same
Intelligence and the same face
Applied differently in different contexts,
The same person in twelve different texts
Assembling themselves in the room into the one.