A Meadow

What was it I was hungry about. Hunger, it is one 
Of the several contraptions I can turn on the off-button to at will.  

Yes, yes, of course it is an "Art." Of course I will not be here 
Long, not the way the percentages are going now.  

He might have been 
                                     Half-beautiful in a certain optic nerve

Of light, but legible only at particular  
                                     Less snowy distances. I was fixed on

The poplar and the dread.  The night was lung-colored 

And livid still—he would have my way 
                                     With me. In this district of late 

                                     Last light, indicated by the hour of
The beauty of his neck, his face Arabian in contour

Like a Percheron grazing in his dome of grass, 

If there is a god, he is not done
Yet, as if continuing to manhandle the still lives of

The confederate dead this far north, this time of year, each
Just a ghostly reason now. There are reasons:  One, 

Soon the wind will blow Pentecostal with the power of group prayer.

Two: the right to bear arms. Three: you did not find my empathy
Supernatural, at the very least.  

—Have you any ideas that are new?
			
I was fixed on the scythe and the harlequin, on the priggish
Butcher as he cuts the tender loin and

When I saw this spectacle, I wanted to live for a moment for
A moment.  However inelegant it was,

It was what it might have been to be alive, but tenderly.

                                     One thing. One thing. One thing:  	

              Tell me there is
              A meadow, afterward.

Copyright © 2011 by Lucie Brock-Broido. Used with permission of the author.