WEBVTT

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Let me read you two poems
by a poet whose work

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I love very dearly, W.S.
Merwin on much the same theme.

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This poem is called "For
a Coming Extinction."

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Gray whale now that
we are sending you

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to the end that great God,
tell him that we who follow you

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invented forgiveness
and forgive nothing.

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I write as though you could
understand and I could say it.

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One must always pretend
something among the dying.

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When you have left the seas
nodding on their stocks

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empty of you, tell him that
we were made on another day.

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The bewilderment will diminish
like an echo winding along

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your inner mountains unheard
by us and find its way out,

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leaving behind it the
future, dead and ours.

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When you will not see again the
whale calves trying the light,

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consider what you will
find in the black garden

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and it's caught.

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The sea cows, the great
auk, the gorillas,

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the irreplaceable hosts ranged
countless and fore ordaining

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us stars our sacrifices.

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Join your word to theirs.

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Tell him that it is
we who are important.

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From the same book, The
Lice, "The Asians Dying."

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When the forests
have been destroyed,

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their darkness remains.

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The ash, the great walker
follows the possessors forever.

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Nothing they will come
to is real nor for long.

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Over the water courses like
ducks in the time of ducks,

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the ghosts of the
villages trail in the sky

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making a new twilight.

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Rain falls into the
open eyes of the dead

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again, again with
its pointless sound.

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When the moon finds them they
are the color of everything.

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The nights disappear like
bruises but nothing is healed.

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The dead go away like bruises.

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The blood vanishes into the
poisoned farmlands, pain.

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The horizon remains.

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Overhead, the seasons rock.

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They are paper bills
calling to nothing living.

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The possessors move everywhere
under death, their star.

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Like columns of smoke they
advance into the shadows.

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Like thin flames with no light,
they with no past and fire,

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their only future.

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