Canaan breaking like a windowpane,
like a mirrorglass-
7,000 years' bad luck.
A desert blown with red dunes,
no oasis, but a fleeting hazy mirage of
wooden boards and curdled milk;
an illusion that won't keep up for long.

Planes skip where Eden has failed;
where clovers grow ten feet tall
and wilt in the summer's heat,
harvests of animal skulls
and broken prayer beads,
stretching across the rivers of
mud and shallow graves.

A wind of dust rises in the west
and scatters itself like a soldier's bones,
like the frenzy of the fray,
like sinners seeking grace.

I dream of a winter so deep
my bones ice over,
and beneath the drifts
dirt becomes clean
and the fevers of God
burn away.