The unjust things are here,
&and a conquest from summer’s swarm-conclusion of flowers,
the gloves and nosegay, each in its own red prayer, laid out, all
fighting for simple sorrows or call it what you will, part and part of
a child-god, Let me see…
I know all the things I use to know
in custody and under sentence
of not knowing enough, if summer was more than five kinds of bees
in their waxy church accountant’s window-honeycomb, the madness
loose in happiness or quite a commotion,
pool of tears taken from some larger body of water where
I can’t swim, — then, then
I’d keep one foot up the chimney, one hand a foot beneath the interior
mole-earth, three gardeners guarding
because I’m sure I’m not Gertrude, in another country. I’m not
one old magpie, its song placed
into the body of another, hers, violently beating her with its wings
like broken-off tree limbs, full leaves swung
in genesis motion— I’m more like hunger,
its mouth close to her ear when it should be mine, here to sing motherlap
songs (There was nothing more to be said)
when, who cares really, the words,
(each to his own language),
did not sound the same as they used to,
crushing the tallest grass in the grassfire heart, knee-deep
in their own dark singe until
silence all around:
if it Please your Majesty!
who sits unjust as dusk in her pale gown-lace,
swallowing down her anger
so she can be witness to this memory, this retreating display,
no fit company for you…
you, who are part of this human, inhuman story,
no, dear, no,
the King’s kitchen is still on fire
as so many blackbirds darken the closed windows,
the only way they know out.