1
 
What we have not heard
will never help us. What we have not seen
by now will never save. The city
 
drowned under winter sunlight like a bad
migraine, the bars shut down,
hint of a pandemic in the air, in wind
 
invisible, the guess and gust of wings.
The pigeons have come home to die.
There are corpses floating in the trees.
 
2
 
There are corpses floating in the trees.
High clouds roll over as on holiday.
The sun, impassive as a president,
 
palters for time and tide. Once we could pray
with honest hunger for whatever life
drew from its magician’s hat;
 
now rabbits sicken on the mutant vine
and hunger is our habitat.
We are hungry. We have never been so hungry.
 
3
 
What we have not followed
leads us now. What follows is a thing we never
dreamed. Prisoners storm the empty coliseum.
 
In its cage, the gaunt heart screams.
Beneath ground, gears and levers
issue another victim to the light.
 
The trapdoor opens: thunder
erupts like anesthetic through the night.
The bars swing open. We have all gone under.