Monday, February 5, 2007

Poem: "Journal of the Plague Year"

Ploughshares, Spring 2006 v32 i1 p73(1)
"A Journal of the Plague Year" by Ben Lerner

We would walk with it into the open
Look down and read the shadows
Of the clouds passing over it

The birds sang dial tones
The infected birds
Gray sentences uncurled

As we smoked our manuscripts
The cattle went mad
Their blue lips smiling

At a sign in the distance
We slaughtered the distance
It was not given us

The magic of numbers
We who slept in swaying
Towers underground

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