Читать книгу The Trailhead - Kerri Webster - Страница 8

HILL WALK

Come let us poison all the honeybees for we

are in world’s dotage—insensible—and

seeing things: spectral migrations; unholy

gyres; squid that light up; a yew tree struck

by lightning, which must mean something;

a back lashed until it suppurates and comes apart

like what paper the wasps spit out; a blinded man

held in a cell for years for

what, for what—

and the river slivers the dark.

And someone says, Cast him out at gates and let him

smell his way to Dover;

and centuries pass; and then

someone says it again; and if

we are not cruel, perhaps it is only

because we are too tired to be cruel.

I dream hounds that bite my belly, teeth

to the softest skin. My needs grow simple

until nothing of me needs

redacting. I walk the hills by night;

I want to put them in my mouth.

There is an hour at which

the foothills silver—

if there are snakes, they are for sleeping.

I go where called.

And cry these dreadful summoners grace?

There is an hour at which all manner of dark

miracles appear—

like, foxes; or, shame; or,

the soldier’s legs leave his body

and walk on by me;

or, strips of skin from off the man’s back

half a world away

fly by my face

as ash—

and all birds are ghosts of the bird

I once drowned in a paper cup

after the cat tore it open but

it kept breathing. Tonight the gulch

eats tire rims and colored pencils, the gulch

eats foxes, and pulses

as we sleep, and as we sleep

the appetites continue, and what we harm

smells its way towards us.