She hears bombs raze the nunnery.

and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread,and who comes like a stranger from outside.Old solitude haunts him, Gethsemane,though once it bound him to astounding acts;now he will walk through every olive tree,and those who love him turn away their backs.He’s called them to the table, past the stoves,and (like birds woken by shots…

watching the world wake on the horizon.In the brush I hear the tangerine talkof blackbirds, and, in a crumbling wall’s nooks,the tumult of thrushes halving a bun.And I see the first cart of dawn turningthe corner, see its owner’s toothless grinamid a pile of leaves lit by the sun.And I smell the scent of something…

there is at least one happy story to tell,something lovely brought on by a storm.Fresh thrifts have sprouted, and a fat wormlazily crawls out of someone’s cracked bell,crawls out of the centre of someone’s hell,out of a skull atop a uniform,while not too far away, in someone’s rib cage,in a sunlit temple without a steeple,two…

The river is a vein that flowstowards his hermit heart, festoonedwith briars, and with poison oak.Five beaver pelts press on his spine;the spirit of an arrow strokeshis beard; his sweat turns into brine.He’ll build a tiny pillar of stonein his mind, and only speak to thosewho speak to him, for when alonethe Lord keeps him…

imagining the faceof the girl, her life abandonedby the midnight sky.So I placed an asterin her tiny skullwhere a glimmering eyehad been, and then I asked herto please forgive us all.

their faces scalded, a fireball castupon their backs, their callsunheeded by mute Tengri,their father in the sky.Yet they fled with the head of Henry,maids in each slanted eye.Now with tanks they return,surrounding Festung Breslau.Townhouses collapse, and streetcars burn.The Khazar lays down his law.Pity the carrion,the corpses on balconies,the ruins unwoken by the sun,the mother on…