Fontegaia goes da guerre...

10

 
The lunar light of old daguerrotypes.
Here Brady's trenches have become mass graves.
An evening star, suspended, distantly (pellucid
wave of tender blue)... Death grown ripe

 
to bursting (life to death, death into life).
Feral eyes in hard gray photos plead
for final recompense - and ferried over
yonder, trade one copper for the sum of strife.

 
A far-off shunting in the railroad yard
reverberates against a wall (of falling weights).
Some counter-measure lifted all that stone
to height of cloud, at windswept Chartres -

 
the wide mandala-labyrinth laid underfoot
patterns its path down to a 10-9-1.
Stony Franciscan target zone, a sermon
sine glossa... Time, unburdened, follows suit,

 
steps into light.  And ink sinks into paper
twilight, too.  Steeped in bitter chemicals,
its phantom, inching... achingly coalesces,
fixed - a Bruegel waltz, a dirge, a pauper-

 
twirl.  Meanwhile a graybeard hobo, unknown
soldier, camouflaged beneath gray skies,
reached out both hands, to stanch the rising
wound.  Adhesive love.  Unconscious bandage-man.

 
The earth proceeds in mourning black and white,
an image stayed in billowing relief; her canvas
sails toward afterlife - some stubborn Jonah's
spectrograph (green almond in midwinter night).