AND BRAKE THEM BENEATH THE MOUNT


the wine-cellar step, the sweat breathed in and out
of smudged & humid walls; pale & small pus butcher's flesh
drips from the collar, rigid the lightened winch
by sausage fingers in the cleft —
the full-filled uniform protracts as the quilted door
of a soundless cell, the microphones embedded,
determined in your stone, temper the pavings,
threaten transfer into tottering position

a big-eyed scholar makes a photogenic
corpse, doll's face in the wreck, a broken board
with the word why half rubbed away: old fuels spent,
old promises; the child, they living, now would be gone
as the fathers whose toil raised a toxic slope,
physics spoiling the child