ESSAY ON SOAP Poem by Jan Wagner

one piece was always nearby,
followed its own phases,
diminishing like almost everything does;
then stood again full
and luminously white in its bowl.

weighed like a stone in the fist,
in a froth, it became softer:
one washed oneself from cain into abel.

once it was forgotten, it weathered
into a fissured, asteroid-splinter,
but rests now moist and shiny
like something from the bottom of the lake
that's been quarried, precious for those seconds,

and we have gathered at the table:
moonless evening, fragrant hands.