beyond the barricades, some invisible gesture
has frozen everyone in place—

The sky flashes past us while we sleep,
deep in our beds, drowning,

cello-shaped in our linen sheets,

What moves toward you, uneven, menacing?
All that you have lost—

Your fingers, wisps of blanket hair
Caught in their nails, extend to touch
The bedside roses, flaking in the heat.

The cows drink with ease. The cows think, if they think,
There isn’t enough ship here to build a barn.

 

He drops—untransformed within the ho-hum
Calx of creation—aged and yet unflowered.

(All night, from inside, fruit fall sounds like footfall.)

 

Rich, he returned once to
Immortalize their destitution
In a heartrending oil

Lucas Cranach, you have painted yourself
Into a corner where you look out across
The centuries, trying to say something

Her heart fails her and the body holding it
lies on its side, the lungs taking on fluid
so it will be, we are told, like drowning
we can’t stop and each week’s watch is a hot