from “Past Life Palinode”
…If it ends, our own time, in general
cataclysm; if the reign on the right strives to
be the sun; if no brazen serpent on a rod ever
hisses again. Well, I wanted to be more than
a breathing clock, not the tones of eternity,
the small dance of a worm whose moves
hollow out a hazelnut. So my steps form
dreams for the children I won’t have, to give
to each other. My wife swings on the arc of a
cycloid and my husband, after playing skittles
on a fairy hill of giants, comes home an old man.
It’s night, the trenches are filled with mysterious
friezes of light…