We stopped writing about Easter When our tree ran out of gas; The eggs warmed; the crosses burned. Buns sued Maine. The bunny made ominous Threats towards Greenland. The parade Turned itself into a hatchet, and dug itself out Of the grave. The land gave up its dead, And not in a good way. Friday went backwards, And the living died like they were in dubious prison For the criminally bald. The mild weather Spoke ill of old Europe, and the wind sang About the merry days of ruination in the markets. The cherry blossoms stopped at every border, To pay for themselves with their own vanishing; Fear went freelance like a befurred farrier, The dangling promises hung themselves out to dry, And no one woke to find anything sweet hidden In plain sight, it was all very unclear where any Of us were; and then Romans handed us nails, Some non-Canadian wood, ordered us To vote with our blows, which brought in a landslide Of blood and flesh, pouring out ...
The currency I traded in Is bearish now, at fifty-nine My volatility index has squandered Its lows and highs, is in decline – The lyric force is muted by the times, Which lie like bricklayers build brick To brick – as that song went, another And another – that was the image, If I recall, from dark gyms, at fourteen Or so, terrified to dance slow, or quick, With those around me on the walls; Music, that brings us back to ourselves, Takes us out to sea as well, Like a drug that can murder or revive; What language can I use to defend a form, A rhetoric, even, that has been designed To crush whole peoples, sign by sign? Tanks roll on, drones scour the air like hawks, To hurt the ones below, but only poetry kills By sound or fine-bonded lines. To me, What’s serene or boundless in a poem thrills, But it advances in English, crushes like a love That will not slow dance to urgency in grade nine. The world was bad in sixty-six, has always been, One supposes, ruled by the man...