He lies beneath a stone
that weighs more than a ton,
his skull and skeleton
like ruins left alone
for twenty hundred springs,
the ruins of a temple
in which a once great people
no longer prays or sings,
their destinies and wills
vanished with each god,
their pantheon forgot
when lowered with the hills.
Similar Posts
Amid the leaves of this his final Fall
but tell me nothing of the girl he wedwhile serving in the Tsar’s Imperial Guard,tell me nothing of the six sons she boreduring the Great War and Revolution,and nothing of the hellish years he spent,a prisoner-slave in Kolyma’s mines.Like Midas, all he touches turns to gold—the leaves are fallen sons and memories,the numbers on his…
The agéd Eskimo, once ‘sangilak, ‘
Today he will not shield a slanted eye,nor starving in the evening stagger back.Having fought a bear and years of cold,fresh salmon never leave his fingertips,and caribou blood never parts his lips.And yet, he’s lost his balance and his hold.He’s ‘pilitak, ‘ of help, but little use.So he lies on a bed of tundra ice,awaiting…
2014
there is a road that leads to birches,pocked with dark puddles and tank tracks,above which no white dove perches.Green men pray to another Christ,a Fulcrum falling overhead,a saviour or a poltergeist,the sun behind it, fierce and red.
A leaf, perhaps the last,
spins in the chilly blastof November, floating freebefore it hits a wall,attempts to run and leap,only to quickly fallonto a mounting heapof others, stop, and fade.No one admired its fightwith wind, and no one madea chronicle of its flight.It lies anonymous.No one recalls or grieves.It’s one of numerousother autumn leaves.No one saw what you sawthat…
The January wind
against the window-panes,maliciously twiststhe black bonesof shivering trees,racksBaroque cloudsin a scudding cycleof dreams,under which rooks,like cast-outangels,frolic,cough up hermeticblasphemieson a grey daywithout snow.
A little slow and thick around the waist,
Always late, she would walk into class,then take her place behind a nerd or geek.Freckled and blonde, and masculine of shoulder,she looked like Butkus ready for the grid,and yet her soft blue eyes betrayed a dancer,the Isadora Duncan of tenth grade.I was the quiet boy who sat up front,who weighed his words and loathed all…