The children are still dead. Time

does nothing but keep us alongside, for

time is lonely & jealous for company &

it failed my best boy, left him outside

and stopped in the great solvent, I

wonder if those unseen waves that surge

through the soil ever turned his face

toward her, we didn’t ask her questions,

we trusted our boy with wings, with

golden study & speech, this great country,

our great exhausting hope.

                                  No we burned him.

Put him in a brass box between the

electric candles. My first twenty years

felt like eighty, I look at you and what

do I see. The water is dead. The rock

is dead. We pour out orange juice &

we pour it out. No-one picks you. All

those who have died go on having died,

dying, dying every day.