Donkey

By | 1 February 2015

Down the street, by the line of crippled old men,
each waiting his turn patiently to fill an urn
From the ruptured water pipe, a donkey is dying,
one of its legs shattered and gangrenous,
But still it walks, as if some labor remained for it
among the piles of bricks and smoking timbers,
and one of the men strokes its flank as it passes,
remembering the garden with perfect living rows,
His father’s donkeys turning and turning the wooden wheel
drawing from the shallow aquifer a stinking sulfurous water
That tasted of its own future seeping through communal graves.

This entry was posted in 66: OBSOLETE and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Related work:

Comments are closed.