They were talking to him about resurrection,
about law, about the suffering ahead.
They were talking as if to remind him who he was and
who they were. He was not

Like his three friends watching a little way off,
not like the crowd At the foot of the hill.
A grey-green thunderhead massed
from the sea

And God spoke from it and said he was his.
They were talking about how the body, broken or
burned,
could live again, remade.

Only the fiery text of the thunderhead could explain it.
And they were talking
About pain and the need for judgement
and how he would make himself

A law of pain, both its spirit and its letter in his own
flesh,
and then break it,
That is, transcend it.
His clothes flared like magnesium