The earth opened its mouth like a snake—
the song of locust poured toward the sea.
We must be silent, there are things one doesn’t
tell in a village mined with passion, scorched to fear.
His mouth doesn’t tremble when he shows us
the numb “trunkless legs” of buildings, sometimes
only the pathway of a foundation, stone
glazed by the smoke, the lake of ash where
olive groves covered the hill. “The artillery
was heavy,” he says looking toward the Vielebit
Mountain, away from the site. The moon glides
against the sun, whose red disheveled head
slips behind us. I think of women in black,
slicing watermelons at dinnertime, pouring wine
the scent of a pomegranate; of women, kneeling
in an old church where frescoes weep into the stone;
women who sway back and forth, back and forth,
dry rosary strings cling to their veins.
I could’ve been one of them, and even you
could turn if you were here. Even you, who I swear
I know better than myself, could talk harshly, send me
for pitchers of wine, as if they could transfuse
blood back into veins. I look at you,
as if you were made of glass—I see one self who dies,
on the hot skin of the mountain, his skull opens into the earth, a secret spring, eyes wide to nothingness.
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