F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 4
THE THIRD DAY
by Phillis Levin
When they came to the tomb
What did they see?
Only what they could not say.
Too empty, too cold
To say what they saw,
Too full to say empty
And cold, but full.
They said what they said,
Saw what they saw,
And knew they could not
Say what they saw.
They did not know
That whatever words they found
To say would fill the world
With those very words,
The best they could find
In that place, that time,
When all words fail or fall.
After the stone is rolled away,
After the sky refuses to reply,
Comes the heaviness of being here.
Phillis Levin is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Maryland at College Park. She is the author of Temples and Fields (1988).
Copyright © 1994 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; February 1994; The Third Day; Volume 273, No. 2; page 81.
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