The Weakerthans sang the saddest song
In the world. The subject of their angry grief
Made no sense anyway. A town laid out
Like a spider web in the middle of prairie
That had been the bottom of an inland sea
That had been dug out by the meltwater
Of continental glaciers that had scraped
And retreated and advanced and scraped
This scruffy shield over and over again,
Such a town doesn't deserve love. The woman
Serving beer at the lounge came from somewhere
In Central Asia, somewhere where they know
Something about civilizations. The man
Answering his smartphone at the bar spoke Arabic.
Outside ghosts of various modern humans
Wandered by and body thought of the drowned
Towns that had so fascinated me as a child
And a teen, those villages in the way of dams
That were relocated in the flesh but obliterated
In the lightless depths, the walls of churches
And the walls of houses arranged like riddles
Under so much black water that they had
No choice but to give up the ghost.
No comments:
Post a Comment