Silentium
       

The sun didn't set, but like a fallen rider
the light un-horsed itself, dove shaggy
into the rucked up mud, and we all
walked down the road in one direction,
some in their last leather, some in silk rotted
gray and brown and bent, and when we
measured our steps past a town, even in wind
the bells swayed toneless and tongueless,
clappers unscrewed and melted down,
wrapped around powder, shipped out in boxes,
the bells bound open as dresses wind-filled
then frozen. What is courage? Had we
had it? What can it mean now as the light is pitched
headlong under our legs, we who sewed up
our mouths and do not know how to die?

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Copyright © 2018 Miller Oberman All rights reserved
from The Unstill Ones
Princeton University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission