Rattler Bites Nightingale Sings
When time is divided into venom and blood,
the watchers of the snake know the harm done, the bitten
one feels cell by cell by cell rubber, mint, metal; agonized
in the heart; then numb. Homer tells and the old paintings show:
each new death and new grief aren’t new. But for you,
rebuking yourself, heart growling, as you try to sleep:
the copse again that must be walked through; cryptic
crawl like over an open fire the twisting of an intestine
filled with fat and blood; fear dividing from hidden joy
it wasn’t you: —once more there is only one death.
Blind, how the nightingale, snake’s cousin,
sings in green darknnesss and seems to touch upon
fresh pain and fault elemental.
