ISSUE: Summer 1995
I shall send down an entire city
Also suspending my tears, as snow—momentum lost! One
With the dead, and their reasoning.
As the gods despise them a potent, new figure.
And I cannot lift anything, alas!
Gravity my rueful science, “sense” its holy war.
(She unbolts a rankest posture
Pulling on some pained oar with unbridled intelligence,
All smiles, and ill at ease.)
Dew on my shield, untasted!
That frank vessel of our instability and fears!
Incestuous loam.
Drive lower this high cost of our shame.
“Boys, I do defile you, and hate my war-torn condition
Poor rope, but virtuous fiber.
Savor it. Invent, or stop a slaughter with it;
Else, how am I to go on, and like my nature, as before?
What’m I to this indecent universe?
How, even, to exist?
Oh. Thither flies thy poesy, a thistle weed.”
