Elegy for the Precious Time Before Dinner
Along the fringe of the two known worlds
Of field, of prison yard,
Behind the house my mother and her sisters
Live in, this was years ago.
We're all still there, itinerant
As wind, the straits of corn
And prison guards who pace their impossible promontories,
And the small mouse just born into this world,
Total as a thumb.
With her sisters who are dead my mother is a beauty
Taking the spoon
To beat the dog away from the pot,
At which they all begin to laugh.
Little beetles with a kind of Viking armor
I want to smash you, smash the spiders
Atop their pagodas
Like bad thoughts,
Smash the crazy locust that won't abandon its post.
At the house the women happily
Eye up the sauce about to boil.
I am wearing my emblematic cape.
I can fly at any moment if I want to,
But I don't.
From THE CLEARING, 2005
