It Became a Time
It became a time when song no longer soared
but climbed, hand over hand up a taut rope.
One cracked voice was all it took. Cathedrals
bombed and gone, carcasses opened to the sun,
their old hysterias leaking out as new wisteria
twined slowly round. When the war finally came,
it surprised us all by how old-fashioned it was,
with a clattering hail of gunfire, shells falling
like scattered stones, and gas that settled like
lowland mist. When it left, children would come
apart like overripe fruit if you weren’t careful
lifting them from the ditch where they’d hid—
