How is it that we measure the content of a man?
If not by algorithms, formulas, or equations,
then by the nocturnal thoughts that haunt him
and by his sweet, trembling nothings.
Have you heard the song sung by the disentranced?
That which is sung full-breathed in soaring embouchures—
In three-fourths time, to the circadian rhythms
Beating in their desolate chests.
For me, I boast a song for the triumphant alongside the slain—
Recite an ode for a martyr canonized by the blade
In wine-dark shades of blood that once
Nourished the cold, wet earth underfoot.
Adorned with coronets exhumed from nature's bosom,
And colored violet by the wine of my indiscretions—
With pounds of drums and drunkard's folly,
I slowly seduce sweet melancholy.
The archer's bow yearns to soar.
The soldier's rifle aims to fire.
Where do the armies kneel;
In gun powder or in prayer?
For they fed the earth with a strange bone meal,
And tended their fields with callused hands.
They were pure and prudent like a thorny rose
And quelled their thirst on the Eucharist and ichor.
Now, petrichor rises from the dampened grass
Instilled with the scent of burning flesh,
And no one recites the Anacreontic—
They only eulogize the ashes,
Pay homage to the dead—
The ones with halos instead of heads—
In the fetal position, bathed in the saturnine light
Of their last afternoon.
Mourning looms like a doleful fog
That each of the living espies;
And the spinster in her bedroom
Howls like a banshee through the night.
The cradle rocks in the wind
in the boughs of the old oak tree.
The zephyrs swaddle the babe
and slip it under their tongues.
