The world

i.
The wind singes
the round, brown earth.
The wind lashes the long jets.
The wind blows through the great oaks
and through the bodies of the sparrows.
And, through our bodies.

The wind becomes
humble and bows to us
where we are hallow I stoop to kiss
all of their knees
one after one.

Until the rinds fall away from their bellies
and eyes, until
the rinds fall away.
I bend to kiss
their all ten sad knees like leaves
poised on the water, their faces
small and near to the stars.

Poised on their knees as poising on ash,
as sacrifice poises its mouth
and opens and speaks a new language
and says no thing,
but sounds a silence in our bodies.

Like the light which falls away,
the sparrows at work
dropping their dark cloth.
The sparrows and their wind
carrying the cloth from singed tree
to singed tree.

ii.
And the scent of olives
across the wind, and the grapes
against the children's
tongues, and the tall
men in their hats
getting caught in the dark air
like getting caught in sinew,
and bone.
And splintered bone.