I.

The constellations sit
On the darksome terrace of the sky
Veins like white linen patchwork over
The chittering shadows.

Lightning catapults over the glaciers
Orphaning thunder in the apple orchards
Where grandsons and their great mothers crumble
In prayer like black olives wreathed in vinegar
With hands that knit possibilities with threads of water
And looms built from sunlit factories that shudder and
Dissolve like gypsies with jaws that curve like pools of oil.

Gunpowder pours over the clay
ravine in a soft waterfall,
Sobbing as it pillows through the
sepulchral dirts to make
Riverbeds with kneaded duvets and
quiet hangs in the spring air
Like a thousand delicate kites,
soaring in piers of bluish smoke.

Oh, the glory that fumbles into the churchyard, where
Daughters clutch scarves of merlot and seaweed with their palms
Gloving rosaries beaded with barren wheelbarrows.

Not a tombstone in the town; dawn quivers,
Spilling dough into the ovens and trumpeting joy that
Rubs its throat in shyness as it blinks over the vigils,
Bright and guttural as a flag cum mattress.

The shutters lie in heaps, wrestling while the wide-mouthed
Windows watch, helpless as eventide, and
The chimneys rise in uniform as the arms of silhouettes do
In thanks to the moons that are arching mirrors,
Reflecting chiffon over the pages of mouthing rifles.

As the anchors clamber toward the sails,
The hulls swell like waltzes writhing in pilfered cellos
And as the wives trudge into the sea with ropes of handkerchiefs
The green sea runs skyward, heady with evensongs.