Life by Dried Waters
Nuke-droughted Harbour. Blood-steel suspension
Bridge to Sanctuary. Leaving
Cinema City – we lived to die on stage.
My fair lady, long is the way up
To the Bardo. It’s no use grieving
For the old world that has fallen down.
There will be light. There will be life,
Even if the present dissociates from the past,
Like a melancholy-torn umbilical cord.
There will be water and strife that last.
Yet with malice toward none, malice comes to us
Stone-mossed morning glories, childishly believing
That the dead are honoured by our lives.
Every shadow I heave is a God-forsaken child,
Every corner I turn I see a brother stranger,
Every skull they grind and polish their heels on
Is a son of a dying, depraved mother.
They poeticise without anger. They’re silent
And thus sorrowful. Fates weaving
A crypt full of scorched and unburied laughter.