We are spared nothing Yusef says
in “Landscape for the Disappeared”
and somehow I believe him tonight
as another siren screams through what
might otherwise have been a calm night
on the eve of summer. I lay here
listening to drought’s fingers dig into
the dirt porous as cotton, where the
last of the dandelion leaves are no
longer succulent, and tree frogs cry out
as constant as crickets or cicadas. How
come they aren’t competing? That’s not
what their songs say. If I could touch
air, take its hem into deft fingers and tease
it. If I could lift the lid of this thick swelter.
Fools! I call them: farmers, crying over
failed crops. What about our own skin,
sweating, ready to be razed to rind, hull
of crackling? Now drunks are devouring
Christ, as a scab grows about our city.
And yes, we are spared nothing,
Yusef, not even these lines that say this.
Not Even These Lines
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which turns 75 this year, was a huge hit by any commercial or critical standard. In 1949, it pulled off an unprecedented trifecta, winning the New York Drama Circle Critics’ Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So attention must be paid!
In Part II of his exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell, the rector of the soon-to-be integrated Gregorian University describes his mission to educate seminarians who are ‘open to growth.’
My recent visit to the Holy Land revealed fear and depression but also the grit and resilience of a people to whom the prophets preached and for whom Jesus wept.
The Gregorian’s American-born rector, Mark Lewis, S.J., describes how three Jesuit academic institutes in Rome will be integrated to better serve a changing church.