So now some poems from Bestiary or from The Renunciations.
Yay. (LAUGHS) I told you we're going to laugh,
because it's a little difficult. Yeah, I think so.
So there's a sequence in The Renunciations
and the title is "Dear" and then an em dash.
So these are like epistolary poems, letter poems,
that are addressed to an unnamed someone.
"Dear--, we come from abundance.
Each season bowed with rain, but here
is the earth, eager to flame.
The air like salt, thirsty, even for the water
we carry in our skin.
New wanderers in this land, we do not
know how to wait for water.
Have never waited so long for rain that every tree died,
left to stand tinder.
For now, I watch the shoulder burn, drive through the smoke
that blots the mountains and holds the old yolk of sun.
I know nothing of fire, its reach, its spread.
I know only that every body makes its own ash,
manages its own diminishing."