The sun sticks its head in the ocean,

God is and God dies,

the night becomes as intimate as a little mall.

A bus noses down

narrow streets, summer greets us

coolly from a screen. The same birds as yesterday

start to wake in the disheveled wigs of the royal palms,

in a melody all

broken wings and artificial flowers.

A sparrow bathes in a puddle,

in ashes, slow, hesitant, like a small nation’s

unconfident leader, and despair

won’t turn into rapture,

it persists. Speeches end, a madman

faces a dark canvas

as he would the face of the beloved, and begins

to mutter

in a versatile, alien language

pure as music

something about the new clarity.

Our children break the mirror with an axe.

Whites beat a black to death,

blacks beat a white to death,

only no one dies.

Behind curtains the protected

stretch out still

upon the silken red divan. The epoch won’t end,

the heart beats and is beaten, smoke

follows lightly as the breath of a sleeper,

and the dawn is hoary with dew.