The Children
In three directions
are two storms.
I instruct the edges
of my hands to become
irises, to shatter
in that way,
in three directions.
There's nothing behind me.
Viols
claw beneath our fences
at the elevation
of sound to pure
unsanctity, the moment
of simultaneity:
airplanes seeming to collide and not colliding, the crow alighting
in the manner of a seabird, the carbomb a more than momentary poppy.
The bad total
of death points one
direction.
It moves
at the edge of my hand
at the memorial service,
viols useless now
laid across their breasts,
the attitude of submission.
I was eating dinner in a tall room. I was the third guest.
I felt a tightening in my asshole, and the yellow wine turned
to red, turned to your hand on another's woven onto tapestry.
How the month of June became our sons, so many bridges for one
river, was the story always delighted you.
The carbomb was faster.
Simultaneous with the iris the viol
shatters in three directions.
Everything I have taken
claws helplessly at sunlight
that won't defend itself.
The red one is the poppy.
Copyright Credit: “The Children” by Donald Revell from Beautiful Shirt (Wesleyan University Press, 1994). © 1994 by Donald Revell and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.
Source: Beautiful Shirt (Wesleyan University Press, 1994)