Monday, December 5, 2016

Robert Verdon, #378, special bodies


(inspired by Susan Hawthorne’s 'Weapon of War’.)

war is the state against babies
a shriek down the barrel of
an elegant cor anglais, perhaps
red inkblots in snow or dust
crying up, crying up, in the veiled world
whereon everyone makes the
supreme sacrifice in time
though it may not always be so:
I am the Resurrection and the Life
no longer the words of a sad lunatic

the state in its majestic
monopoly of violence
holds off civil war
the classy war
of who holds which
end of the stick
the most despised of her class
executed for a miscarriage
the living touchstone cast,
lynched from a dying tree

they dig a grave for each birth
these would-be angels
in their majestic monopoly of silence
special bodies holding off
with the old night terrors
of disintegration
the growing up of our labour
of our special bodies
which know the sad music
of immortality

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