Me in my bugproof netted headpiece kneeling
to spread sodden newspapers between broccolis,
corn sprouts, cabbages and four kinds of beans,
prostrate before old suicide bombings, starvation,
AIDS, earthquakes, the unforeseen tsunami,
front-page photographs of lines of people
with everything they own heaped on their heads,
the rich assortment of birds trilling on all
sides of my forest garden, the exhortations
of commencement speakers at local colleges,
the first torture revelations under my palms
and I a helpless citizen of a country
I used to love, who as a child wept when
the brisk police band bugled Hat’s off! The flag
is passing by, now that every wanton deed
in this stack of newsprint is heartbreak,
my blackened fingers can only root in dirt,
turning up industrious earthworms, bits
of unreclaimed eggshells, wanting to ask
the earth to take my unquiet spirit,
bury it deep, make compost of it.
from Still to Mow, W.W. Norton, 2007
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