Oraisons Funèbres

Drought

Once we were roisterous monsters,

coarse and unchangeable, indebted

to no one, indigenous to nowhere,

incumbents to battlefields, beholders

of ghosts. All our joys were clotted

with pearls, all our griefs were denied

with stone, all our words were bald-faced

bricks, all our lanterns were fueled

with turpentine and salt.

Now this plague, this rain

of nails, this slow-moving

barrage, not as percussive

as artillery but just as sheering,

has harried our bodies into staves

and cudgels. We are needle-stemmed

and weather-marked, our backbones

burned with sloth, our skin, our bark,

gravelled with dearth. We have become

smaller,

somber,

solitary,

rooted

in dust, a few scrubby curiosities

without bounden shoals, collected

into unclosed museums.

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