(1) Knoll: In Place of Elegy
Held together
and to haze over the meadows
by pain’s prick of oneness
we waver,
keep lips moving,
ask weeds what they were.
Like pierced hawks sewn to last light’s
cloud circle, seeking place to fall
tethered and back into the boulders’ rest
we stay unable to stop seeing
bent poppies, crumbling and cow parsley,
plants loose, even in name hapless,
that we had so much wanted
to call our mountain:
song standing, word one.
(2) Hurt Big Bird
High fliers hurt – tallest maybe
nastiest when beak breaks,
gullet comes back cut.
Syllables their pain’s told in sound
stiff, rasp like tall gaunt
shrubs they grazed
weeping from wind’s fastness and
(nettle to eyes) sharp song rising:
smoke wrung of earth’s stunt.
When their blood drops touching what is
under it is not to mark, write,
prettify some wry stand of sumac,
help some dwarf thing shine.
They bleed because they could not help
finding: taking far things’ cry.
Not bewildered: hurt. Bright
is their knowledge of the drear they breathe:
sky from which, to which they fly.
--Lloyd Haft (from Atlantis, Querido 1993)
