Sostenuto

                                       they have of  it at altitude

like this, and filtered

                           air, what was

in my lungs just an hour ago is now

                            in yours,

                                         there’s only so much air to go

                around. They’re making

more people, my father would say,

                              but nobody’s making more land.

                                                          When my daughters

were little and played in their bath,

                           they invented a game whose logic

              largely escaped me —

                                         something to do with the

                                                     disposition

of   bubbles and plastic ducks — until

               I asked them what they called it. They

                             were two and four. The game

was Oil Spill.

              Keeping the ducks alive, I think,

                                        was what you were supposed to

                                                    contrive, as long

            as you could make it last. Up here

                           in borrowed air,

in borrowed bits of   heat, in costly

                                           cubic feet of  steerage we’re

                            a long

              held note, as when the choir would seem

to be more

                            than human breath could manage. In

                                       the third age, says the story, they

divided up the earth. And that was when

              the goddess turned away from them.