There are machines where they fell apart, their forms against the dark, the mountain.
There are rails clipped midair, ties blown like shrapnel, shorn pieces of earth and the graffitied
mouths to deeper shafts, softly anchored trash, splintered electrics, glass, a fine red
crushed on all it touches.
Still-life as the teens come to press their emptinesses here.
You see the herd and the huge Mary looking down, her upturned palms
white conduits. They say look
at yourselves. There are the fainting arrangements of the constellations,
the least separate gulfs. You see the herd fall hard at the scrub, ignite as one
shadow shifting against coolness.
You think of a deep within. The veined glances must still hint there. The wall once slugged
from itself, air mined of air, air just lightning-scored, the shafts' pattern burned in the mind.
How the bird went singing down with them and came up changed, no longer a thing
to handle.
And the city beneath. The city's thinking, as if of lofted rock. The long haul
of occasional violence gone unchecked. Structures tiring. Awkwardnesses of iron
in the yards. There is mention of money once the children slumber. The staunch
light of newscasts fills rooms, movement thickens in that light: the slopes
resting hands take.
You think this is what gentleness is.
There is mention of first snow, there is the unmentionable. Where the herd has gone needs
no shepherd.
Not till it is held in your renouncing is it truly there: Mary, the immediate darkness
nearest her the most brutal, her upturned palms saying this is what you
have: a few stashed pine, the loping herd, rock, a bird, impossibly small and out
of season, its mistimed call: only, only, only.
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