Читать книгу Washita - Patrick Lane T. - Страница 13

BYA JHATOR

“I want to believe in one place,” he said. “I want it in my blood.”

—Olen Steinhauer, The Bridge of Sighs

Three vultures in the ditch below Hartland dump.

A doe lifts her head from the gravel.

Bright dawn and images, this false world.

A vulture takes a hop, a loop of gut in its beak.

Why now, this song of tired messengers?

The doe’s eyes, curious, ask nothing of me.

Hers is a modesty I can’t touch.

The earth is everywhere and scant.

Infinitesimal creatures rise up to prey on us from the offal we wade in.

As the vulture, we piss on our naked legs and hiss.

I give, as always, alms to the birds, a sky burial, a breath in flight.

The volt hulks on the bare branches of the dead fir.

It is one place, rock, not stone.