Elegies for Sister Satan: Second Elegy
Sister, is it not time
for us to learn to speak
now that the infernal machines
have captured the breathing word?
Now that drones fill the sky
over Santiago de Chuco,
Central Park and Unter den Linden?
Is it finally too late
in this welcome winter rain
to cross the singing bridge
to that place where
memories of the future
bend like cypress limbs
under ancient snow? Where
the plague years melt away
and the shrill voices of children
explode from the mist
with nothing but pain
and praise to sing,
as if one and the same,
like two bodies joined
in a last embrace?
And these cypresses,
ministers of mourning,
how is it we applaud them
in their grace?
2017
