for my grandfather Alex, borrowing from Walter Benjamin

Grief has become an orchid in the land of technology. I nourish grief as my grandmother waters the orchids of Mendel Court: green grief, orange inflorescence. Attach ritual to that photo of five-year-old you in Marseille, fleeing the regime; attach ritual to petal and poem. Let ritual rattle till it no longer knells, let ritual rattle till it rings like hope. I bend my ears to the orchid’s history, timbre of a Baroque recorder, pure tone—no, no. Everything’s muddled. The orchid’s mouth is also an ear, a furred chamber, resonance and echo. Grief curls its tendrils. I take a photo of grief and splice that photo into the poem. I cut clippings from the poem and foster shoots of love. I reproduce the simile; I reproduce the video of you playing flute, the video where you lecture on Benjamin. Your voice, cupped in the organ of the poem, cleft in the furrows of technology.