The wings fold fanwise and then snap like knives.
Beyond the mountains, clouds of locusts rose, sucked into the
West,
While little dogs danced in the streets and strangely moaned.
Soon their antagonists were funneled smoke against the sun.
I used to watch all this.
Atrocities outside the plaza, something about a stain
Somebody saw, reports of scuffles on a stair
Somebody interrupted, evidence of sabotage
In the orifice of a sponge. The Japs, maybe.
I used to believe all this.
You woke me as they turned the streetlights off.
Then new lights raced across the wall from windows to the
door.
We made love while the bombers roared on by,
Gone seaward. The room rocked and the world closed in
your eyes.
I used to know all this.
And now the plaza drenched in rain, the locusts migrants else
where,
Contemptuous with their knowledge of this gutted place. And
you, you,
Dead with the rest. —What have they done to me, what have I
Done to myself, entranced these days by only surfaces
Of smooth and curious stones, the wet leaves falling?
And now I live like this.
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