Argument:
It is the end of time and I still encase my eternal mind, coveting its tiny
ticking sleep. The hazards of staying afloat, a disused water bomb, the
scintillating wreckage all about me — things remembered, outward now —
miraculously take on their own absurd reality. It is at least a start. Look,
isn’t it growing light already?
Now in my heart day breaks
where the world wakes
and all light seems wheeling home.
Father death, unnatural mother,
you who made me late for life,
early born for night, my home,
to scrabble over one dried-out bitter loaf
for which my life was taken in God’s fold;
You who’ve unfused me, disabled me
for all the scintillant proud pleasures
promised in the life I never learned,
created darkness for a home
and birthed me there, guileless
grazing shepherd, victim-to-be;
Unnatural mother, father death,
who’ve used me, man’s first martyr,
dead child of favored potency,
for a worldly legend of abuse,
a small blood-crawl of uselessness
most coveted in dark time;
Dear, dumb parents of forever, you
who’ve wracked me on my brother’s shadow,
he who always died
steeped in his deeds,
daylight’s ruddy prince,
hero of heretofore,
hereafter’s swallower.
Back in his golden agelong world of day
towers first began to tilt,
floods wavered and began to fall.
One waterfall death wrought
still falls beautifully for newlyweds.
The rock beneath it chips, erodes,
the helpless flood still rolls down,
pounding toward his memory —
animal and alive as sallow serpents
trying to erase the world,
fill all oceans with the nullity
of a heretofore forever.
And I, disused, barely afloat,
my own mind’s litter,
become the world’s one small-eyed hope
it will survive.
Unnatural mother, father death,
who made me:
dark was my coming hither,
and in the dark home,
engendering from his bloody corded arm
this fuse of murdered love,
I, first and last the lapsing ruminator,
now bound toward my brother’s home,
hum silently:
In my heart day breaks
where the world wakes
and all light seems wheeling home.
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