Why God allowed Montserrat to fall
Is not explained, nor why the Queen of Cattle
Drove my one calf into the slaughterhouse.
Of course my poems are sad. How else could they be?
The judge and the criminal live in my own house.
I am constantly coming upon secret court proceedings.
Why can we achieve organization only in wartime?
I want to know why so many plays of Sophocles
were lost,
And why God becomes an ox and eats the grass each
night.
When I was twenty-six, the words that fed me were
killed
Along with the vowels that joined me to others;
And the calf of language was cut up and thrown into
the ditch.
My small talent was trapped under the water,
And the lungs I breathed with were filled with lies.
If I had been human, it would have been worse.
That is what Separation is like: I know it now.
I had only will to keep my lungs from filling with
water. I was unfaithful even to Infidelity.
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