Image by Mike RayhawkA Field on Mars
Hunted from their places,* fierce+ & hungry# hordes
& nomads plunge into our streets.
The word is desiccation, somewhere that was fertile once,
& now, battered by a hostile wind, becomes a field on Mars,
a world more lonely than the world allows.
Behold the grandmother, her skin a dirty grey^
as if the light were of a foreign color, absent,
hidden from the hole in which she dwells.**
These are no children’s games – or are they?
Cards slapped on a table, thrown against a wall,
brought as a pack down on the willing skin.
Saints alive!++
The call to battle rattles the savage mind,
a premise from the present yet no less exotic.
Granted: that their funds are toxic comes as no surprise;
that the lack of means betokens a further struggle;
that nations once deprived rise in their millions.##
It is a thought on which to dwell, shaken^^ from sleep.
* pastures.... + skinned..... # angry.... ^ [trying to see it in his mind]
** she smells..... ++ [words that her ghost called forth] .....## with
their minions .....^^ rousted
Jerome Rothenberg
Posted over on his site Poems & Poetics
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