Under this roof of pitch and tar I try to close my ears against the tearing at the bars, wings' useless beat for depths of northern woods, and think, ah, peasant cruelty bred in the stifling village. But villages don't breed. One at least brought out the man who crisscrossed the Alps, his writings, his ever-unfinished paintings, not unlike the pendular arcs of these migrations that measure out our sphere. He, they say, a village son and guest of hungry kings, paid for cages upon cages, then, rara avis, sprang open the doors, stood back to study flight. We Have Wrought Anger divides and grows, cancerous cells.
Fingers burn holes in the newspaper.
Eyes bore through skulls, broil brains. Voices raise a hurricane no TV miracle preacher knows how to divert. They pierce the stratosphere, melting the poles. Toxic-waste trucks fall off highways, tanks cracked. Warmed earth pushes up lead coffins like bloated corpses after the flood.