by David Solway (April 2020)
Bird, Oskar Kokoschka, 1972
All God’s Children
I was startled by a sound of thunder.
The bird hit the window, disintegrated
in a heap of gut and feather. Under
the gutters, the deck was blood. Her mate did
a kind of jittery dance, bent his head,
went still, then raised what remained in his beak
and took wing to where birds bury their dead.
That’s it—another elegiac freak,
just a miniscule part of the quota
of universal suffering and loss,
an infinitesimal iota,
a sacrificial wood chip from the Cross.
The bird is dead and Nature has spoken.
Tell me, how can God’s heart not be broken?
Friends, Oskar Kokoschka, 1917
Dressed to Kill
I see them walk in every walk of life.
I see them earn their daily living wage.
I see them in the midst of tempered strife
or bloody outcomes where the foes engage.
I see them at the circus masquerade
and at the theaters where all applaud
to watch deception expertly displayed.
I see them grow indifferent to God.
I see them shopping at the local mall.
I see them glittering and confident.
I see them where they rise and where they fall.
I see them feral and irreverent
and know there is no “rather,” no “instead.”
The ghosts are dressed to kill. I see the dead.
«Previous Article Table of Contents Next Article»
__________________________________
David Solway’s latest book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House Publishing, 2019, London. A CD of his original songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link