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For a Few French Poets
Don't settle the score
with your physical gremlins
by exalting their demise in a song.
In those days
when we plucked our sustenance
from every passing hand
that walked our way,
swallowed everything in view
and sometimes jammed it down
if it wouldn't go quietly,
we inhaled secretions that had not yet
been discovered,
hoping for an accidental alchemy
no matter the odds;
we played Devouring Angel
with our fingers and our glands
working together
in a powerful alliance,
holy or not we didn't care.
Our cathedrals and our sacred books
were constructed and bound
as we went along,
just pieces of the longforgotten planet
we came to lie down in.
Our eyes marched over
a thousand battlefields
and rested among the rocks and trees
beside the rivers and waterfalls
until our flags and emblems
our universe of hieroglyphs
and dances in the shadows of campfires
became a world made up of stories
long legends and the hoots of owls
a world so big we hadn't the time
to see it or to rest.
We carried it in a pouch
around the waist
and spoke of it
as if it were a thing
that we could hold and fondle
before taking another bite.
Heavy as a lead weight with wings
we covered our ground
scattering seeds
keeping our brushes in tune
listening for that dear bright
impossible song in the sky,
watching for that rainbow
that would melt our hearts
like the violins
and the reds of autumn.
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