Lost Content

You couples lying

where moon-scythes and day-scythes reaped you,

browning fruit falls and sleeps

in tangled nests, the wild grass,

falls from your apple tree that still grows here:

cry for your dead hero, his weak sword, his flight,

that you were slaughtered and your bed poured whiteness,

the issue of murdered marriage dawns.

The streets crack, a house falls open to the air,

sun and rain lie on the bed.

And the river still runs in a child’s hands

under the factory’s black hulk,

four stacks that used to bloom with smoke

over shining leaves, beneath thunderheads.

Then the storm

shatters and beats and after

in woods

a scented smoke of light,

a dripping quiet, and the small gold snake

sparkles at the pond’s edge.

But who is he? What were

the goods he made, what became of his loved wife,

his children, and where

has he gone, fearsome, powerless? The silver

path of air from the river’s bend to its rippling away

beneath the low concrete bridge

is still pure. No one comes, and the child

who watched by it has vanished.

Or sometimes he appears for a day, a night,

in the walls and windows reflected on the water,

in goldfinches’ flight, cricket song, the heron’s great

rise from the bank. Last a carp leaps,

voices and a lantern slide down the secret stream

in black and gold peace,

past the child’s husk, the family never born.

Source: Mahoning (Brick Books, 1994)