Words have reason to be sullen.
The corn, tired of the same field,
grows scraggly as teeth, and the sun
hangs in the sycamore tree
like a voice from a loudspeaker, bald
and indecipherable. We who are old,
having foretold the day and hour
of the world’s end, now live on,
ridiculous, in a vanished place.
And the young? They have one
ambition: to be doctors.
Long into the night they memorize
the roads to normal. So words,
as I say, poke around like ants
in the blown leaves, unable to run.
They drag their thoraxes over the loam
crying how thin the daylight has become
and how debauched the queen. But then
in the routine static of feelers struck
on feelers, comes news of a dead beetle.
They smell the iridescent corpse
shimmering green and gold against
the pale lichen, and they move
toward it, finding the trail.
They mount the hump of a log and there
it is, grand as a yacht, the beetle
beached on its back, its faceted eyes
studying dust, its six legs tossing
like antlers. Stumbling but solemn, they hoist
the corpse and bear it-its own bier-
the moving line of ants chanting
for once the old polyphony
of beetle wings above and leafmold
underfoot, the song of the sojourner
returning to his hill, the whole
column keeping the beat, calling
the rich cadence of decay.
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