Four Poems

The Resurrection of the Soldiers

Of course the walls are silent, but
can music be implicit there?
What horns and pumping trumpets, shut
in paint, might blast and shake the air?

What happens when the skies unclose,
and how does the sour ground come fresh?
How freely do the worms compose
their variations on the flesh?


The Cloud

Near the beginning, it must be a summer's day,
we are together in a black-and-white garden
in front of the greenhouse, you on your knees
and me with my hands on my knees, our faces level,
and smiling into the sunlight for the camera.
We both look shy there, even of each other,
...