Читать книгу Washita - Patrick Lane T. - Страница 6
ОглавлениеARROYO
The dead do not come riding dark horses up out of the arroyo.
They do not arrive in dust, grey-shrouded, singing the old songs.
No, they arrive like turnips pulled winter-burned and cold from the soil.
They lie at your feet, worm-riddled, creased with dirt in the furrows,
fallen peasants left behind in the caterpillar treads of tanks.
And the rags left on the dump by Mandelstam, the holes in the snow by the aspens.
You kneel by the turnips and plead forgiveness; beg the cold winds abate,
that the green world come back, that every seed left dying come again to life.
The stories they told you as a child are rocks in your skull.
That tiny girl in the winter ditch weeping as the logging trucks rolled by.
Her dress was pale as her mother’s eyes.
You lie in the long unwinding, wet with worm casts, your tongue burned by salt.
It will take more years than you remember to warm her small hands.
