Читать книгу Waking - Ron Rash - Страница 19

After the woods a sudden

swoon of light in a clearing

and I am where I was then,

that summer morning I brought

food to Charley Starnes who drank

rotgut whiskey so he might

douse the memory of gas

searing his lungs, the bullet

that almost opened his heart.

Say sir, my grandmother said,

gave me the tin of biscuits,

mason jar of soup before

I walked the fence line and through

the woodshed’s board-gaps watched him

sway back and forth before flames

that seemed fueled by his curses,

and what burned inside the drum

I never knew, but left all

I’d brought on the porch, then fled

the place where six months later

sleeve or shirttail dipped too close

and Charley Starnes wore a suit

of flames through barbed wire, into

a corn field where they found him

face down like a felled scarecrow,

shattered stalks marking his swerve

and lunge through rows as though

a man trying to dodge fire.