Houses Remain

The houses remain unscathed in the ruin
Of the drainage of rain water,
Pouring down, down, down.
The sky glares at me and speaks-“Hark!”
The song of a lark stills me wills me nothing is gone,
Dead, or buried.
A musician has been buried. An artist has been buried.
The words are transient; a nine-year-old plays
A violin, before the darkness comes,
Every day, trying to wake the aunt,
Ask her to make food.
Food. It fills the soul. It is the soul.
The field mice are the fruit of the soul, the wolves
In their dens hunt field mice, their whiskers
Slightly damp in the cool night air. Hair.
Stare at me from a dream that has not ended.
Stare at me from waterfalls, sprinkling diamonds,
I turn myself into a work of art,
Of a man sitting in a chair with a broken radio
And a dumb dial,
Cracked and worn from being hidden in the attic
For so long.
The zoos are filled. My niece asks me where
The lions, where the zebras, the horses.
The horses sleep in meadows. Sleep in shelters
In London. Old men named William have lost
Their hair,
Eyes glistening with tears.
He cries for the lost, lost, lost.
Wonders what it has cost him.

Unknown.

I left you, far away, dancing in a field in Georgia.
The corn fields are always growing. The women are always
large, especially their breasts, which heave in rhythm to the rushing
of rivers-
streams.

Thousands of streams rage across Georgia, hardly understood by man,
for they can save lives and take them. I am not one to understand. I hold
no objects in my heart; I do not cater to a man; my eyes are small and
brown and you yell at me from the other room, asking me when dinner is going
to be made.

Sometimes, I want to scream so loud they can hear me in South Carolina,
especially in Greenwood where the president heard his favorite story over
a cup of tea from a man with a brown hat and rotting teeth. In Africa, it is like
this, the woman in South Africa tired of being raised by her aunt,

tired of wondering where her mother is, her brother, her sister, tired of not
knowing her own name.