Читать книгу Wilder - Claire Wahmanholm - Страница 9

ADVENT

In the first month of the year

birds curdled the air.

From our windows we watched them

clench and billow, their wings beating

so low to the ground that seeds rose

from their furrows.

When our ears began to ache from the pressure,

we sent out our augurs.

A great fire, they said,

is blowing from the east.

This explained the fevers, the mercury

that broke the levees of our mouths,

the apples that dimpled and rotted

in our orchards, dropping through the leaves

like heart-sized hailstones.

Behind our windows, we waited for the fire to turn

even as we watched the horizon

go red from edge to edge.

Every morning new packs of animals fled

through our orchards. Every morning

new apples dropped into the hollows

of their tracks.

We watched our windows warp and crack,

thought of our daughters’ hot foreheads,

of the fevers we knew would climb and climb

without breaking.

We were out of songs to hum. Our throats were boxes

of soot. In our orchards, no more insect thrum,

no swallow quaver.

How did we dare have children we couldn’t save?

If we closed our eyes, the falling apples

sounded like heavy rain.