There's a story I tell men with amputated limbs
who come like islands on numberless lorries,
shelled all day, conserving the blood,
sky shooting up and down the red trenches,
reprisals now turning into a stream,
as the offensive begins to shred, steel helmets
and eyes that translate nothing, and the nuns,
hard as granite.
Under fire we have only the very pure wounds,
in our mouths the cigarette that will never light,
dark cattle cars in whose feverish straw,
and dust again on the march farther south.
In the wake of the bombers come the low-flying,
as the minutes, then the hours, but the worst
are my hands, skirting the Great Square
as through a dead city, transporting the drums
of sabotage.
Revolution is night climbing out of the valley,
feeding our bodies to the stars, extinguishing
all but the votive candle, keeping vigil
in the last lost town. They shot her, her brother,
the wheat, every animal. One house left standing
and a bitter scrawl. I am avenging, but at night
I tunnel, burying more mines in the soft soil
of the pass.
All our lives we have hated white moonlight.
All our lives we have been hating, as we learn
to hate here, tonight, on the ramparts, where
the sentries, the snipers, crave a strong moon.
We have gone through the streets, lisping
our words, hearts full of vicious light,
and always the stars above us that way,
and small children bearing the sonorous names.
