In Apulia

Under the olive trees the light pours out its seeds, 
poppies appear and begin to flicker, 
burning the oil that feeds their fire; 
it’s a light that never recedes.

Drums inside cavernous cities drum their endless beat, 
white bread and the lips still blackened, 
manger cribs that are filled with children, 
these attract the flies that feed.

If the light of fields revealed the prehistoric, 
poppies would smoke inside the lanterns, 
pain would consume their sleeping forms, 
till its burning was exhausted.