Читать книгу I Know Your Kind - William Brewer D. - Страница 14

CLEAN DAYS IN OXYANA

You ask what facts I remember from the last five years,

but facts have nothing to do with memory.

When I do think back, I always see the five

buck heads over Crockett’s bar, their racks

like the hands of saints upturned and open

to receive the next havoc—how calm

they’re made to look after terror, fur still

as infants’ sleep. I always thought

one of them must have wanted it, if only

a little, the end—an orange star blooming

between the elms, sound too slow to hear,

unsurprised at the wound’s speed,

its determination, like gravity—and the buck running

with the others, not from, but toward, or

into something I have almost seen. It couldn’t,

wouldn’t have looked away, as it can’t now,

its eyes the key to its lifelikeness, what you see

as black glass, I see as the absence of flesh

begetting the absence of light.