Last Song
–Fleur Adcock
Photo by Pamela Heckel on Unsplash
Last Song
–Fleur Adcock
Photo by Pamela Heckel on Unsplash
Curse
Cyanide in the forest
Dead fish in the sea
A loaded gun
Where the sun should beMay those who sold us
Down the river
As polluted
As the lies they toldFind their banknotes
Carcinogenic
Nuclear active
Their gold.
Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash
Family Portrait
Upstream,
the salmon fail,winter catches them
one freezing current at a time –we lose
the oak first,roots crown, tired
with the earthas we are with the animal
inside us that we have failedto quiet. Winter
is an old milkwe leave
for the missing,a starving flame
that callsthe unnamed
fox.
Photo by Luis Enrique Ibarra on Unsplash
come sweetly
It starts
The wayIt ends—
Fingers ofImpossible light
CrawlingOver your
Face. InBetween—mind-
Less waiting.Mouth gunk
Or a gunkedUp heart—
Going is justClimbing
Back inside.
Photo by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash
ChorusSun
make me whole again
to love
the shattered truths of me
spilling out like dragon’s teeth
through the hot lies
of those who say they love
me
when I am done
each shard will spring up
complete and armed
like a warrior woman
hot to be dealt with
slipping through alleyways
of musical night people humming
Mozart
was a white dude.
Photo by Juvnsky Anton Maksimov on Unsplash
Don’t Name the Chickens
–Charles SimicLet them peck in the yard
As they please
Or walk over to stand
By the edge of the road.The rooster strutting about
Will keep an eye on them,
Till it’s time for them
To step under a treeAnd wait for the heat
To pass and the children
To return to their toys
Left lying in the dust.
For, come Sunday,
One of the chickens may lose its head
And hang by its feet
From a peg in the barn.
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Carnivorous
I was lying loose from God. Strange is it not bestBeloved, in the New World, in this skinny life,Intemperate with chance, my spirit quickensFor the fall’s estate. In India, the halfHour is the hour, we were like that then—Jammed wrong & wrong in the diurnalMangy chambers of our carnallHearts, the rose robes rustling loose as velvetCurtains at the stage prow, passingInto the strange salt air of an IndianOcean, hoarding kindling, headingWest with hours, later than we mightHave known, counting tins of meats & oil left,If they should lose or last the night.
Photo by Tiago Donangelo Figueira on Unsplash
Red Language
–Heid E. ErdrichIf I heard the words you once used
in our wild place rough with scrub roses
in sand—if your words came back
gray and kind as mild winter
believe me I’d still understand
offer my own red language
my tongue to your tongue
so we recall what we once said
that made us live
made us choose to live
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
–Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Silence
–Babette DeutschSilence with you is like the faint delicious
Smile of a child asleep, in dreams unguessed:
Only the hinted wonder of its dreaming,
The soft, slow-breathing miracle of rest.
Silence with you is like a kind departure
From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd
Into a wide and greenly barren meadow,
Under the bloom of some blue-bosomed cloud;
Or like one held upon the sands at evening,
When the drawn tide rolls out, and the mixed light
Of sea and sky enshrouds the far, wind-bellowed
Sails that move darkly on the edge of night.