Earth-Eater! Earth-Eater!

Please take and holster these offered meats—

                                                                we are grieving.

The sky will not stop

                            parading us   with its colossal stores—

we have traveled to the jaguar river's rummage

                                                              of rockfall and muds

but we dared not cross it.

                              The old we will uncommit  but not the litters.

When one of us fell   like an atom

                                                  —for fathoms and fathoms—

or like light   slipping

                        off the lip of a terrible star

the horses exploded

                              into magics   our priests did not know.

This is our load.

                              This is our sacred hatred and total.

No one will tell of our missing

                                      or record this era of unending storm.

What has my country become?

                       What have the columns of our brave men done'?

When we are finished   we are mysteries

                                            —for sciences of the delivered—

or repugnant

                as dumb endurances are sung and sung and sung:

All music is broken from the silences in stone.

                                                            All stories

offend a bored god   then retreat

                                       into the deep mood of its first believer.

Copyright © 2009 Byron A. Kanoti All rights reserved
from The Greensboro Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission